My Children Made me This Way

I missed D’s birthday post on her birthday so I thought I would do it now

..better late than never..

My oldest Monster..where to start..

She came into the world hard, 23 hours of labor almost 8 of pushing with a bruise that covered most of the back of her head, but she was the rare pretty baby..she was beautiful from the start. When they handed her to me I knew what it meant to hold your heart outside of yourself.

Sweet and shy and easy to blush. She is quiet, always has been. Slow to warm up and trust. She watches the world with thoughtful eyes before she takes a step into it. She is careful, cautious almost to a fault. Sometimes you have to nudge her into new things.  But once she steps into it she shines.  She has this smile that lights up the room, once you can coax it out of her.

She is the oldest great grandchild as well as grandchild on both sides, the only girl in a long string of boys on her Dads side.  Another blonde with blue eyes who looks nothing like me, she is her Daddy’s little girl in all senses of the word.

But the little is starting to pass..she is almost as tall as me. And the girl is becoming a young woman. She is looking more and more grown up.  There are more and more glimpses of the woman she will be one day peeking out from inside the girl that she is, I can see her slipping back and forth between the two. Shades and shadows that are mingling till one day it will be glimpses of the little girl that I am catching instead.

Ready or not…my Sunshiney Girl is now 13.

Since you only turn 13 once so..birthday party.  We haven’t really had any beyond family since we moved to MO from NY,  but it’s time to start again and D is the proud recipient of the first one to be thrown in Missouri.

Now, I like to do fun parties, themes that keep the kids active so that I don’t have boredom and all the things that cam lead to. I gave her a few options and she has decided on a sleepover,  chocolate spa theme. We are doing chocolate brown and pale turquise with gold and silver stars. The spa will be called ‘Etoile’ (french for star) and be my living room and dining room. Facials, manicures, pedicures, and movies. Plus the wii and the PS2 to play on. She’s only having 6 girls over, so it shouldn’t be to bad.

I am going to make her a website with an itinerary and menu and movie list and directions for her friends moms, just like a real spa would have. Planning the activities and the menu at the moment, looking up recipies for food and facials both. I’m also working on the logo for her goodie bags and invites as well as the menu. And I need to find a good cake recipie. I’ll have to post the logos and so on when I get them done.

Biggest downside so far? Chocolate recipe research makes me hungry.

Second birthday of the month and the last of the year, a not so little any more blonde boy is moving into double digits and making me feel old. I posted yesterday about time, and every time the year turns on one of my Monsters I have an even more acute awareness of the manner of its passing.

This one tried to kill himself and me both the day he was born. Umbilical cords are scary things when they are wrapped around necks and then made to short by that very wrapping. But he breathed, and I stopped bleeding so he obviously didn’t succeed as we are both here for this birthday. He does however still have a need to get tangled up in to all sorts of things he shouldn’t.

He has big, clear blue eyes and curls a girl would die for, both win him almost every person who looks at him. He has never met a stranger, just a friend he doesn’t know yet. S has smiled his lopsided grin at everyone who looks at him since he figured out how. He talks and talks, and reads and reads, and inherited his lack of grace from his mother. What ever it takes he loves to make people smile and has become the biggest goof ever to that end. And oh my god does he dance like the white boy he is.

He’s smart, and doesn’t even have to try. It comes as easy to him as breathing when you convince him to pay attention. He has his head in the clouds all the time. He has an imagination that just never stops, and a temper that flares fast and hot. But it’s forgotten nearly as soon as it’s over and he has the softest heart. He cries as easily as he laughs.

He is silly, a clumsy messy smart noise with a frog in his pocket and dirt on his face. And S is turning ten today.

Happy Birthday Hug-a-Bug

Pale platinum blonde hair with natural gold highlights cut into a bob that curls under to frame dimpled cheeks, eyes that bright shade of blue you only get on a bitter cold winter day filled with curiosity, and a constant impish smile are the very first thing that you notice about F. They are also the things that make her look as though there is no way I could have birthed this little girl. But I did. I remember it. I was very much there.

She came into the world on a cold day in Upstate NY amid a snow storm that at least waited will we got to the hospital to break. Her birth was probably the only easy thing I can associate with her. But the minute I looked down at her I knew I was in trouble. She looked right back at me, wide awake, steady, appraising me. I could see her personality, and I fell in love all over again.

She wasn’t one of those cute newborns; she was splotchy and red and looked a little like one might expect a troll baby to. It took a few weeks for F to be a pretty baby. But Pretty has been my nickname for her since she was minutes old. Partly because we were still trying to agree on her name though once we saw her the one her Daddy was holding out for won. His meant fair.

She thinks it she says it. She wants it she will find a way to get it. She was climbing before she was walking, and she walked early. She talked a bit late, but once she could she started to tell us stories about when she was old. She still does. She tells the worst jokes ever but her laugh is contagious and you laugh right along.

The child who can and will beat up her older brother for picking on her will not harm a bug. Spiders cannot be killed and have to be let outside. She has fly buddies she carries around in her hand. I have watcher her pick up and pat bees on more than one occasion and not once has she been stung. When the Monsters catch fireflies, her jar is always fullest. I’ve paid for crickets at the pet store so she could take them home and set them free.

She is a whirlwind of crazy beautiful imaginative curious to-smart-for-her-own-good fearless trouble and today she turns seven.

Happy Birthday Pretty