The Boy: A Retrospective

Today is The Boy’s 9th birthday. Here is a pictorial retrospective of his life thus far.

This is him at just a few hours old. He was exhausted from being born and getting his shoulder broken in the process, but he retaliated for the break by peeing on the doctor the moment he was born. He gets a real kick out of that story.

This is my all time favorite picture of The Boy and I. Mister made it into a calendar for me.

This is him on his first birthday. Look at those cheeks! He was such a little chipmunk at this age.

This is shortly after they wrestled the microphone away from him at a pre school program. He loves to be the center of attention. I wonder where he gets that from. Stop snickering!

This is him riding what he called his ‘fast motorcycle’. It really wasn’t all that fast, but he thought he was racing the wind. This was his second birthday.

This is The Boy at his Kindergarten graduation celebration. The reason why there is only one friend in the picture is because he and the friend next to him were home schooled for Kindergarten. My precious baby was much too young to go to public school! We sent him to a private Christian school for first grade. He didn't get to start public school until second grade.

This is Mister and The Boy on the first day of first grade. It's kind of funny that this photo has the edge of my older son's car in it. It's a reminder to me of how many years there are between them.

The Boy is in 3rd grade now, but I don't have the recent pics on this computer. Sometimes I think he's growing up at the speed of Microsoft. You know what I mean. A Microsoft minute can last anywhere from 2 seconds to 20 minutes. It speeds up and slows down and makes no sense at all. But since he is the last of my children, Mister and I are treasuring every second.

He's 9. How did this happen?

In a few short hours The Boy will be 9 years old. I'll post a bunch of pics of his life tomorrow. Right now I'm lost in a memories of where I was 9 years ago tonight.

The scene wavers and then reclarifies in a backflash:
I already had two children. Childbirth was not a mystery. But Mister was a novice. This was his first - and as it turns out, his ONLY - baby. He was such a great student. He attended the baby classes and watched the films with me. He was not going to be one of those sit com dads that panics and gets half way to the hospital before he figures out that he left his wife at home. So I told him it's time to go and he stayed so calm. He knew that I would be in labor for days. So he said to me, "We have time to make a pot of coffee." (I love this man so much. I torment him horribly with this story. If he thinks it's mean, I will delete this.) Anyway, I'm thinking, COFFEE? I'm in labor here, and it kind of HURTS. But being the devoted wife I am who also knows her own penchant for over dramatization, I think to myself, "He's right. I'm overreacting. I can't go through this if he isn't hopped up on caffeine." So I agreed, and he made a pot of coffee. Meanwhile, I'm practicing my breathing and calmly calling the folks to let them know. My mom-in-law, who is the most spectacular mom-in-law ever, agrees to drive two hours to our house and stay with my older kids. They are 13 and 15 y/o at the time, so it's ok if I go ahead and leave for the hospital now. I mean, as soon as the coffee is ready.

Guess what? When I got to the hospital, I was dilated to an 8 and it was too late for an epidural. But Mister is wide awake, so it's all good. We got to the hospital at 11:15 pm and The Boy was born at 2:12 am. That's what I call close.

That's where I was 9 years ago tonight. Was your evening that memorable? I bet not.

Happy Birthday Chicklet!!

My family has a LOT of February birthdays. Tomorrow is my grandbaby Chicklet's birthday. She will be 2 years old. I mailed her some presents including an Elmo hooded towel, a new outfit, and a pair of sun glasses. She lives in California, so my little sun bunny needs to be beach ready at any time! Here is a picture of Chicklet wearing the sunglasses.

Isn't she absolutely the CUTEST thing you've ever seen? Just in case you need to see more, here are a few other birthday girl pictures from her party Saturday.


Let the present opening begin.

Look at that Tinkerbell cake!

Don't tell Grandma, but this towel really annoys me.

I mean really, a TOWEL for my birthday?

Build Your Own Pizza

We never eat out. We're just not that kind of people. First of all, we don't really like other people all that much, so why would we choose to surround ourselves with them after a long day? We also never order in. I can make fried rice much cheaper and tastier than the delivery place! So imagine my surprise when Mister wanted to go out to eat on Valentine's Day. It's all the more special to go out with your soul mate when you don't take it for granted.

So that means we're on a roll and I decided to throw caution to the winds. We decided to order pizza tonight. (I know. The extravagance is shameful.) I can't remember the last time we ordered pizza. I think it might have been in 2006. Maybe.

Now, since we don't order very often, this is a process of unfamiliar steps that we have to learn as we go. First, we have to decide which franchise is going to get our money. Since I didn't have time to look up their policies and practices to choose the least environmentally offensive option, we decided to choose based on coupons. This necessitated an excavation of the paper recycling bin. It never occurs to me to save pizza coupons. (See paragraph 1.)

Domino's it is. I found some almost expired coupons with a note that we can order on line and TRACK our order. Cool. This is almost as much fun as tracking my Christmas packages on Fed Ex and UPS. I'm all over that.

When we got to the Domino's site, another surprise awaited us. You can build your own pizza online. You choose the size and the crust and then check options. The pizza avatar changes as you check and uncheck boxes. (Really, this is amazing. Who thinks up this stuff?) So then, I get elbowed out of the way. The Boy wants to build the pizza. Oh what an amazing pizza he built. You can add ingredients to half the pizza, the other half of the pizza, or the whole pizza. He clicked. And he clicked. And he clicked. Eventually, I made him stop. So then he unclicked. And he unclicked. And he unclicked. We ended up with a pizza that is Italian sausage/black olive on one side and pepperoni/pineapple on the other. I couldn't talk him out of the pineapple.

Then, we got to track our pizza. We watched a flashing status bar with text below it. Byron prepped our pizza, then it was cooked and boxed. Ashley left the store to bring it to us at 6:20. At 6:28, The Boy ran to the window to see if she was there yet just as she pulled up. We yelled 'woo hoo' and ran for the door.

Oh Good Grief! We are so easily entertained here. Poor Ashley had to walk backward all the way to her car because she was afraid to turn her back on us.

Our Words Betray Us

People First has two meanings - at least in my world there are two.

First, it's the name of a group for which I am a local advisor. It's a grass roots, civil rights organization that works hard at supporting people who have disabilities to make their voices heard, especially in the political process.

Second - and the subject of this post - it refers to the way you should speak. There is so much backlash about politically correct language that people who demand it are mocked by comedians and subjected to eye rolls from the general population. The truth is, the way you speak is a reflection of the way you think. So when you say: 'There is a disabled man' you are putting the word disabled before the fact that he is a man. Now maybe that might be the first thing you notice, but for that man and for those who know him, he may be a great juggler, or a good listener, or be a funny storyteller. For anyone that knows better, the disability is NOT what defines the man. It's typically pretty low on the list. The better way to speak is to put the person first. If you absolutely have to mention the disability, you might say, 'There is a man who has autism (or whatever).' The even better way to speak is to say, 'There's Jack.'

Also, you don't say someone IS disabled. You would say that they HAVE a disability. That way you're clear that the disability is a piece of the person, not the definition of the person.

I heard a speaker at the MACDDS conference this year. I was really moved by one of her power point slides. It said:

Be careful of your thoughts, for your thoughts become your words.
Be careful of your words, for your words become your actions.
Be careful of your actions, for your actions become your habits.
Be careful of your habits, for your habits become your character.
Be careful of your character, for your character becomes your destiny.

That was your daily lesson in both semantics and respect. Go forth and spread the gospel.

The Jezebel [Not her real name. :-)]

For the past two weeks, The Boy has been talking to me about ‘Jezebel’. His friend really likes Jezebel, but The Boy likes her, too. Suddenly some other fu – um -female has the power to make my son happy or to crush him like a bug. She gets to decide which it will be. I have no power here. Do you see where I’m going with this? We have the beginnings of a soap opera playing out with complete sincerity and accompanying heartbreak in a third grade classroom. I want to laugh. I want to smack the little tramp. I want to hug The Boy so close that he squirms and pushes me away.

I met her last week at the Valentine’s Day party. I’m sure I must have met her at the Halloween party (sorry, FALL party) and the Christmas party (sorry, WINTER party), but she held no importance in The Boy’s life and so I did not commit her name or face to memory. Now it’s different. Now I eyed the enemy child up and down with a calculating squint. I’m sure the theme from High Noon was playing in the background while I squared off with this 8 year old floozy. Clearly, he can do WAAAY better, but that isn’t the point. The point is that he wants to ‘go out’ with her. (Seriously? They call it going out? There’s no car involved. No movies. No romantic picnics. Just chase and catch games on the playground. Phhht. Whatever.) Anyway, I had no choice but to smile my fakest smile and tell her how much I loved the Valentine Box she made. (It actually was pretty creative.) Then I winked at her and gave her an extra fruit roll up. See? I’ve got my boy’s back. That roll up may sway the balance. Maybe Mom’s not so powerless after all. I’ll keep you posted.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

By the way, I’ve gone back and edited my previous posts to remove names. There are some really weird people out there. Nuff said.

Happy Valentine's Day

This is my mom and dad on their wedding day, February 17, 1961.

I'm pretty sure the greeting card companies made up Valentine's Day. I've never much cared for it except when I was in elementary school and Valentine's Day meant party day. That was pretty cool. Now the best part of the holiday is chocolate covered strawberries. (I'll wait here while you run out and buy some for me.)

On a completely unrelated topic, I took The Boy to rent a movie last night. Whatever happened to his heart-warming-cartoon years? You know what I mean. The movies with the cuddly, loveable characters and simple themes of morality and goodness. I think those years are gone. He now mostly loves anything related to Star Wars. He wouldn't watch Lion King or Cars again if you paid him. We compromised last night on Fly Me to the Moon. It was so bad that we turned it off and watched the animated Clone Wars tv series instead. At his Valentine's Day party at school yesterday, he opened a box of red and white Nerds. Then he promptly arranged them on his desk into battling armies. The white ones were clone troopers, of course. Three other boys crowded around right away to provide input into the battle strategies, so I guess he's not alone. I just want to keep him little.

On ANOTHER unrelated topic, I skipped the 5K run today and the bake sale, too. Go ahead, tell me I'm a loser. I feel like a whiner, especially considering that some of my friends are jumping into icy water today to raise money for Special Olympics. If you think that's a cool (pun was intended) thing for them to do, then please send money to Special Olympics.