Category Archives: Birthdays
Months, years and whatever else is notable.
Happy 8th Birthday, Stella!
Dear Stelly,
Happy New Year! Happy Birthday!….a month late.
Why so late this year? Well, partially it has to do with the fact that within a period of 4 weeks our family pulled off two major holidays, a dance recital and two birthday parties. It’s like somehow our entire year’s activities get squished into the end. But, if you want the real truth about why this has dragged out so long, it’s that these posts are just getting harder and harder to write. You are more grown up than ever, and it is difficult for me to find the balance between enough and too much when it comes to sharing details of your life. On the Internet. Where growing populations of your peers are surfing the Internet from their phones.
Kiddo, this is your life, and you should be the one who gets to decide how much of it you want shared with the world. And man oh man were there some hum-dingers in there this year. But, I’ll just do my best to hang on to those for a more private time. Like when your first date comes to pick you up. For now, I’ll stick to the basics.
LOL, OMG, Totes, J/K!!
So, it seemingly took you somewhere between 15 and 20 years for you to get ready this morning. Those 6 different pairs of earrings weren’t going to try on themselves! Then, after fidgeting with your hair, and trying on three different pieces of outerwear, you stomped out to the bus stop at the 11th hour half sighing, half whining that your boots TOTALLY didn’t work with this outfit.
Your musical tastes have, thankfully, evolved along family lines. You listen to (and enjoy) a little bit of everything. Unfortunately, “little bit of everything” also includes things like Katy Perry, The Biebs and pretty much everything on the local top 40 station. And, like every child who has come before you, repetition and volume know no limits.
We have officially landed on the planet Tween – a trip I thought was going to take a couple more years. Apparently, not so much.
War and Peace by Age 9
I have mentioned more than once that you eat books for dinner. And lunch. And Breakfast. And snack on magazines. To say you are an avid reader is like saying The Beatles were this sorta popular group in the ’60s. It would take an entire bag of exclamation points and underscores to really make the point any more clear. For Christmas this year, your grandparents got you a box of books. Yes, a BOX. And no you didn’t roll your eyes or yell “Next!”. You squealed with delight. I know this will seem completely backward and make no sense, but many of our arguments are about the fact that I am constantly asking you to “PUT THE BOOK DOWN and [insert desired activity here].” And, although you have a library that rivals the county archive, I do appreciate the fact that you consume books for enjoyment and not for sport. You reread books all the time, and dive wholeheartedly into the stories and lives on those pages.
True story: One day last fall, after a flaring of tempers, you stormed off in a fit of tears. It was only later that evening as you and I were walking the dog that you told me that you had gathered up a flashlight and an apple, and had hiked across the street to the horse pasture, where you had secured a secret spot under the trees and planned to spend the night. As you shared with me the details of your plan and showed me your spot, you explained that part of the plan was getting away because you were mad, but mostly, you just wanted to have an adventure like Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny (The Boxcar Children). In the most honest and sincere voice I have ever heard, you explained in great detail how much you loved that they were always having adventures and how they were always helping people. I think it ranks in the top 5 of the sweetest moments I can remember. And, it is this story I will flash to when you announce you are joining the Peace Corps.
Oscar & Felix and their other brother Felix
You and your brother. Hm. No delicate way to launch into this one. You two are the Odd Couple. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out which one you are. To be fair though, our whole house is kind of a study in contrasts. There are many jokes that have swirled around over the past year about how we should be renamed The Lastwordigans, or the Loudersons, or The-Always-Have-to-Be-Right-Even-When-I’m-Clearly-Wrong-smiths. No one in this family is shy about voicing their opinion. Or controls the volume at which they do it. Let’s just say that when it comes to the roles in this family, the concrete has set. And as fate would have it, there is definitely some alignment of personalities from parent to child going on. In one corner we have your father and your brother. Their corner is a series of piles of stuff and things and more stuff and it is organized in a methodical fashion that we are prohibited from touching because of its supreme importance. In the other corner is you, although we can’t see you because you are buried under a chaotic pile of everything you own, and you are probably reading a book. I am somewhere in the middle shaking my head at the lot of you, making a sarcastic remark and pouring another glass of wine.
Here is a set of photos I took during Christmas dinner this year:
You look like you extracted your crab by haphazardly smashing it repeatedly with a hammer, with speed-metal playing in the background.
Your father, on the other hand, looks like he used a scalpel and forceps, while a nice Beethoven concerto wafted through the air.
Oscar, meet Felix. You’re both crazy.
The Quilts
We completed a complete full cycle of “firsts” without your Uncle Scott this year. Each holiday and birthday and anniversary of this or that was insanely tough, and will no doubt continue to be. It is amazing how this grief cycle works. For weeks, we are fine, then either your Dad or I will have an odd day, or an especially vivid dream, and we feel like it all just happened. This year, your Grandma Judy embarked on the emotional journey of making a quilt for each of you out of Uncle Scott’s shirts and jeans. In addition to the quilts, she built a book that compiled the quilt-making process from beginning to end. I can think of no better way for the two of you to keep him close as the years inevitably whittle at your memories.
Family is family, is family, is us
I think it is important to point out that the 4 of us have really come a long way over the last year or two. We are figuring each other out, and exercising a lot more understanding for the idiosyncrasies and quirks that we all bring to the table. I have watched you do some pretty amazing things when it comes to understanding your brother’s intensity or the needs of your friends. Or even the needs of others, for that matter. In lieu of birthday gifts, you asked all your friends to bring food that you could donate to the food bank. Pretty awesome, Stel.
You are so very different from your brother, which has made it more challenging for me to be sure I am giving you both what you need, as opposed to giving you what it appears you need. Your brother wears his needs on his sleeve, whereas yours are a little more buried. I find that I often overlook them because I don’t see them. But that is something I am working on – trying to be more patient with you, when you are not yourself. You’re tough and resilient, which often masks the fact that you are also vulnerable and sensitive. You will always be the older sibling, and I will always have expectations of you that seem unfair. But that is our lot in life, us older siblings – I know, I’m one too.
So Happy Birthday my goofy, creative, outgoing and intelligent daughter. I know I say it every year, but you’re one-of-a-kind, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Love,
Mom
Happy 8th Birthday, Sweet Girl!
(more to come soon!)
Happy 5th Birthday, Porter!
Dear Porter,
Today you turn 5 years old. And at this point I think I’m going to suggest you grab some juice, your blanket and thumb, and sit a spell – because this could take a while.
First, I want to tidy up a little unfinished business in regards to losing your first tooth. I am pretty much the worst mom ever for not properly commemorating such a ridiculously huge occasion. I posted a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it link over on Twitter, but other than that it slipped by without even a word.
Naturally, it was a pretty big deal for all of us, and it was an emotional sucker punch to me to realize that you – MAH BABY! – had a loose tooth. What!? How did this happen? You aren’t old enough to lose a tooth! Not possible! No way! And yet there I stood, watching as all of your 4 1/2 years caught up with me in a single moment.
When it came to the actual tooth losing, you followed a virtually identical sequence of events as your sister: you wiggled it incessantly over the course of the next 24 hours until it was hanging on by a microscopic thread of gumline – the whole time insistent that you could not, WOULD NOT, pull it out. Until you did….
As for some of the other more notable developmental milestones this year, you got up on skis for the first time, managed to get pretty handy with a pencil, taught yourself how to whistle!! and have begun to read.
As for those things that need to be recorded for the sake of posterity and future good-natured ribbing, there are the following:
You are a hoarder. There is no delicate way to put this. A ongoing and seemingly endless stream of items are collected and stored in specified, non-negotiable locations throughout your room. I have managed, on some periodic stealth missions, to sweep your room of all the little sticks, rocks, bark, paper, plastic, but have been less successful in a more comprehensive purge. I fought all urges to buy you a shopping cart for your birthday this year.
With one or two exceptions, you have continued to hold firm on your shorts-only policy. You have managed to turn our dining room into a sweat shop wherein I have had to slave over the sewing machine altering countless shirts of yours from long sleeved to short-sleeved. I have reached the point now where I have threatened everyone within an inch of their lives if they event think of buying you a long-sleeved shirt, and I have resorted to just hacking the sleeves off pajama tops without even bothering to hem them…because I am classy that way. After about a year of refusing to wear socks, you finally decided it was time to give them a try again. And I’ll be the first to go on the record saying that they look quite stylish pulled up snugly to your knees.
I’m happy to report that we have spent a good portion of this year unraveling the mystery heretofore known as The Cute and The Angry (referenced here, here, here and here, oh and here). After much household unrest, we made up our minds that we would set out on the mission of finding ourselves an expert. So, after a couple of meetings and a covert observation mission staged at your preschool, The Child Whisperer (as I refer to her ) began guiding us through the process of decoding your personality. First came a vocabulary list of words: temperament, adaptability, intensity, empathy. Then came the strategies, all of which go a little something like this: When faced with a difficult situation, think through the list of all possible reactions. Now, on that list identify the most unintuitive and instinctively opposite option. Okay, now do that one.
So we worked at it. Sometimes it was a ridiculous mess, but guess what? Sometimes, it actually worked. And somehow, through all this listening and talking and talking and listening, we found some harmony. Yes, I just used the word harmony in relation to our family – yes, you heard me right, I said harmony. Then, high on the aroma of success, I attended a 6-week parenting group that not only allowed me some comiseration, but also brought in some other literature to draw from. And lo and behold, MORE HARMONY!
Let me be clear: we are still loud and messy with our crazy leaking out the seams and over the edges, and there is still plenty of screaming and foot pounding and 4:00-cocktail-needing. BUT, our correction-cycle of meltdown to problem-solving has shortened considerably. Which, in our world is like winning the gold medal of parenting.
You are getting ready to head off to Kindergarten this fall and we are all left scratching our heads at how all this happened so fast. There is part of me that is nervous, and yet another part of me knows that you will do great. You are spooky smart. There is no mincing words on this one. However, each and every one of us in this family comes with quirks. Your dad is a doorknob toucher and I am an intolerant bossypants. Your sister is, um, how do I put this delicately? Precocious? Yes, precocious. And you? Well, you know what you want. And don’t want. And are very clear on these two issues. Always. And I can only hope, that as you enter the cold hard world of Kindergarten that the work we have done and continue to do, will help you cope when things don’t go exactly as you have planned.
There is one last thing I want to add before I wrap things up. This last year, we lost your Uncle Scott. I need to mark this place in time for you because to be perfectly honest you just don’t have the emotional processing power at this point in your life to fully understand the magnitude of this loss. You grasp it on a very pragmatic level – the details of what happened, that he died and that you won’t see him anymore. But the emotional impact of this loss, is still somewhat of an abstract concept for you. Scott was your dad’s big brother. His only brother. He adored you and Stella, as you did him. And although your dad and I have every intention of keeping him alive in both of your hearts and memories, it won’t change the fact that we will all forever miss him and his presence in all of our lives.
And so, there you have it. Year 5. The fun, the goofy, the quirks and all. I could never truly capture all of it, but I will say that I love it when you ask “Mom, could you louder it up?” when we are listening to the radio in the car. And I love it when you tell jokes and do your booty-shaking dance and sing along to the music. I love watching the relationship you are building with your sister – truly sibling-like in every way. And I love you, little man. Happy Birthday.
Love,
Mom
Happy 7th Birthday, Stella
Hey Sis,
Well, here we are. Year 7. A year of growth, and change and life altering moments.
If I’d ever had a 7 year old before, I might be able to have a little perspective. However, being that I have no recollection of being 7 myself, I instead find myself proud, conflicted, confused, excited, perplexed and surprised – as in, daily. Like, how sometimes you are 7. You play fairies with your friends. You build forts with your brother. You color, and make potions from mud and grass, and watch cartoons. Then, sometimes you are 13. You pout. You primp and preen about your appearance. You trot around with your iPod belting out lyrics like “How will I knnnoowwww if heeeee looooves me?” Aye carumba. I sense the changes coming, and it is frightening. No, make that terrifying. No, wait, make that frighteningly terrifying. Your dad and I both can personally relate to many aspects of your personality – which directly underscores our fear. Ironically, our counselor informed us that it is that empathy that might be our greatest asset.
What counselor? Oh yeah, about that…
This year, your dad and I reached a point where we felt like we had emptied our parenting toolbag (even going so far as to turn it upside down and shake it vigorously in the hopes that a Chaos McMinimizer® might have been stuck somewhere in the lining.) So we sought professional help. We initially set out on this quest due to your brother (something he will hear about AT LENGTH in his birthday post) – but also to get a handle on the overall chaos our house seemed to be continually swept up in. Our counselor – The Child Whisperer, as I like to refer to her – gave us some pretty interesting information that has helped us understand the intricacies of your personalities a little better. You, my little flower, have a bit of an impulsive side to you. This wasn’t exactly news. Nor was the fact that for both you and your brother they had to add about 6 additional numbers to the scale so we could accurately score you in the Intensity category. None of this was really all that shocking – however she did give us some guidance on how to productively channel all this awesomeness: trickery and magic. And sometimes, handcuffs (but just sometimes).
After last year’s little leapfrogging exercise you did from Kindergarten to 1st grade, we all of a sudden found ourselves walking you to the first day of 2nd grade. Poof, just like that. It was an emotional day for many reasons (more on this later), but you – per your usual self – walked in, sat down and owned the place. Just before letting out for Thanksgiving we had your parent-teacher conference, and with the exception of a not so subtle comment about someone’s need to always have the last word (ahem), you are a model student. And although you jumped from the top to the bottom of the age heap, you are indistinguishable as anything other than a full-fledged 2nd grader. Just promise me you will use your powers for good and not evil. Please?
You are still an avid reader and often times when I wonder where you have been for the last hour, will find you off somewhere buried in a book. This becomes very conflicting for me when I have asked you on 15 different occasions to get your pajamas on and each time I come to check you have only moved one inch closer to your dresser – while still reading. You’ll have to excuse me if I find difficulty in yelling at my child to stop reading already.
Now, on to the part I hate to have to write. This year your Uncle Scott died. It still sounds so surreal to even say. It was out of nowhere, and although it has just now been a little over three months, all of us feels like we have lived 10 lifetimes. Your dad and I opted to tell you about it right away, and gave you the option of attending the funeral. You immediately agreed, telling me that unlike those of us who were at the hospital, you didn’t get the chance to say goodbye. And although you were there, going through the experience with all of us, it has only been in these following months that I have watched you process what it all means. We have made a point to continue to talk openly about Scott in hopes that you and Porter will understand that this is something that takes a long time to work through and that no matter how much it hurts, we want to keep remembering him. You are continuing to ruminate and come up with new questions – like when, out of nowhere, you asked me if it hurts when you die. Ugh. I try to be honest in my answers, and try not to repress my emotion – but it is difficult, because I can tell that it upsets you when you see Dad and I cry. You have continually read and re-read the children’s grief books that we got from the nurses at the hospital, and they seem to be a comfort to you, as well as a signal to me that you are thinking about it. Stel, this will be something that will overshadow our lives forever, but your Dad and I are committed to do whatever it takes to bring us all through this. One step at a time.
I know that as you look back over these pages later you’ll realize that my frequency and volume of writing have thinned quite a bit over the last year or two. We are at a point where you guys need me more than my computer does. Thankfully, I have managed to keep a consistent stream of 140 character blog posts running over on Twitter, and a quick skim through that list tells a story of it’s own. I have no doubt I’ll get a chance to return to writing more frequently, and when I do I think even that will have changed. As you get older, I am careful to be much more selective about what I will and won’t say here. It isn’t fair for me to share details of your life that could ultimately be stumbled upon by your peers. Things that are funny or crazy or heartwarming to me as your mom, could be mortifying to you, and I want you to know that I respect you way too much to put you in that kind of position. Unless you deserve it ;)
Happy Day, Kiddo. I love you more each year.
Love,
Mom