This year February is just a little longer than normal - Hooray for that.

Ah, February.

I have a love/hate relationship with February, that I think I've mentioned before. In the beginning of the month we're always wrapping up our Girl Scout cookie sale which always proves to be hectic. By the Superbowl Sunday my co-leader and I are usually ready to pull our hair out and put a formal ban on the words "Tagalong" and "Samoa" within our earshot.

Then we have Valentines Day, which can either be the most wonderful day or the most disappointing day, depending on our expectations. This year I was happy to pick out my own roses at the grocery store and remark on how beautiful they were every day as they opened up. Bug, still a little tender from his break-up, had moved on to another cute face and had a less than favorable response from her when he attempted to woo her with chocolate and a teddy bear on Valentines Day. Middle school can be brutal, y'all.

Rounding out the end of the month is my birthday, which has officially moved from being the happiest day of the year to another reminder of time's constant passing. I'm less than a week away to the big three five and I'll be happy when it's passed, I guess.  I wish I could be more like those people who, no matter the year, are elated when it's their day. They look forward to it, they plan it, they get excited about the attention and the gifts and the hub bub.

Don't get me wrong - I do enjoy celebrating the day with my family. I just enjoy it a little more when it's one of their birthdays we're celebrating, not mine. This year I plan on sitting on the beach with my toes buried in the sand and a cold margarita in hand, and I'll try to just look at it as a beautiful day with my family.

I do love a good margarita.

The Man is officially a grown up today, yesterday he was just a kid playing house

Today is The Man's birthday and therefore a day to celebrate.

Today he turns 36.

When I was a kid, 36 was old to me. I can remember my mom being 36. Vaguely, but I remember it. And in my head, now, 36 is really a grown up.  It's like, time to start thinking about mutual funds and plans and safety nets and investments.

What? I was supposed to be thinking of all that stuff before? Pshaw. I have two more years.

Anyhow... I digress.

So, since The Man is officially a grown up today, I guess things around Spazland are going to have to change.  We'll have to start doing yard work on Saturday mornings and making our bed every day.  Our radios will have to be tuned to easy listening and we'll have to watch the evening news and discuss current events at the dinner parties we're going to have to start having.  We'll have to find some friends that are a couple. Their names should be something like "Jack and Alice" and we'll go on vacations to quaint locations with them.  We'll have to start going antiquing and The Man will pick up golfing as an excuse to get away from the old ball and chain and drink scotch in country club bars.  When people come over for our cocktail parties they'll compliment us on stuff in our house.

"Oh, that side table? I bought that with Alice on Amelia Island last summer at the cutest little antique shop while Jack and The Man were playing golf."

On second thought, I think I'm pretty happy not being a grown up.  I'll take the scotch and vacations, though.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Wonderful. I feel so lucky that you were born.

Where @bethenny and @domesticspaz are BFFs and delusion plays no part in it...

I'm watching Bethenny Ever After, the most recent episode where she has her birthday meltdown.  And by the way, I love Bethenny... in my delusional happy land we are best friends and meet for light lunches and Skinny Girl Margaritas every Monday afternoon.  I'm not completely off base, either. We've talked before. I have proof.

See? A budding relationship.

But I digress. Anyhow, so I'm watching this episode and the part where Jason (her husband, don't you know these things?) brings out the birthday surprise in front of everyone at her party almost made me cry.  She so clearly does not know how to handle that kind of attention, and I get it 100%.

And you might say "C'mon, this is Bethenny Frankel. She has attention on her all the time. She loves that crap."

But no. For some weird reason, birthday attention is just different.  In the episode Bethenny has a conversation with her make-up artist that hits the nail on the head. I'm paraphrasing here, but the make-up artist says to her something like "you either get too much attention or not enough" and then "you don't want to get disappointed, so you don't prepare yourself, and then you're disappointed because you didn't prepare."

And it was like an a-ha moment for me.  Because that's exactly it. I think, for some reason, and I can only speak for myself, I've decided that I don't deserve that attention, so it's uncomfortable to receive it. For Bethenny, maybe it's because birthdays were probably a big disappointment for her based on her parents being suck ass, non-deserving of a kid, parents.  So preparing herself for a big happy birthday is like setting herself up for disappointment... but then getting it without being prepared for it is completely uncomfortable and scary.

My parents don't suck at all.  And my birthday was never forgotten (can you imagine how grown-up Samantha Baker might handle birthdays?) or understated when I was growing up. It wasn't like today's kids who get a themed party with friends invited every year, but my mom would make a spice cake and there would be presents and my grandmothers would send cards with money in them ($8 for my 8th birthday, $9 for my 9th, and so on) and I would get to pick what we had for dinner.  And that was good.  A couple of years I got to have a party and invite friends (my 7th and 16th) and on my 8th birthday my parents took my best friend and I to Disney World, which was awesome.

But I was never comfortable when all the attention was focused on me.  When I was really little I would cry when people sang "Happy Birthday" to me.  I remember the feeling, too.  This desperate feeling of all the eyes being on me, singing, staring, expecting something.  I hated it.

So I understood when Munchkin cried when she was younger, too.  I remember one year telling my family that we wouldn't sing to Munchkin. We were just going to have the cake and open presents - no singing.  They overruled me and sang anyhow (you have to sing, it's her birthday!) and she cried and I felt her pain.

Because there's just something about that birthday attention. There has to be some, but too much is a problem.  A big 40th birthday celebration, complete with violinists using hot pink violins (what the hell was that?) and a Bravo TV crew, might be just a little too much for even the most seasoned celebrity.

And Jason being all "It hurt me so much that she wasn't excited. She should have fun because we put so much effort into it" made me want to smack him.  He appears to be a great guy, truly... but projecting his own love of birthdays onto her and then expecting her to react the way he wants her to react is not supportive.  "I wanted to tell her to suck it up. Sometimes you just have to put a happy face on."

It's her party, Mister Perfect Family, and she can cry if she wants to.

Now he is SIX

ZOMG I'm posting something.

I know it's been over a month since I last posted and it had been a while before that. It's just... the pressure... the pressure got to me.

But you know what? I'll get into that more in another post.

Because today's post is for something else. It's for GOOBER!

Today is Goober's 6th birthday. SIX! My baby, my last child, my youngest. He's six. It boggles my mind how fast the time has flown by.

So, of course, we must have another birth story.

Goober was scheduled. It was a Friday. My doctor wanted me to schedule him for Thursday but I refused, not wanting his birthday to be a day of mourning for the rest of the country. I remember she seemed irritated by that. Whatev.

That Thursday night, as memorial programming graced our TV, I folded laundry and scrubbed the floors. I washed the bathroom, I dusted the windowsills, I made sure every dish was put away and everything in place for when we brought our brand new baby home. I didn't get even a wink of sleep. Because, really, who sleeps when they know they're going to have a new person the very next day??

We arrived at the hospital at some ridiculous hour. It was still dark outside. I was dressed in my favorite maternity shirt and our bags were packed. Sitting in the hospital bed, all hooked up to monitors and waiting for the doctor to get there and perform my Cesarean, I carefully applied makeup and made sure my hair looked great. I knew people would be taking pictures and for ONCE I was going to be prepared.

As the sun came up, family began arriving. Our hospital room was filled with all the people who loved us, all fresh faced and excited. Before long, The Man was dressed up in some weird meshy get-up, and I was being wheeled into the operating room. Yeehaw!

I sort of wish The Man was writing this because his perspective of the whole thing is so much different than mine. His involves blood and a screaming purple alien and a horrible fear that I would die.

Mine is much less gory.

Perhaps from lack of sleep or a bad reaction to the anesthesia or who knows what else, I had to continuously ask my poor anesthesiologist for one of those little barf trays while they prepped me. It never stopped. Luckily I had followed directions and not eaten anything for 12 hours so it was nothing but water. Oh how fun.

It all seems like a blur... not as clear to me as when Munchkin was born. The Man was very attentive... perhaps a little horrified at what was going on around him.... and before I knew it we heard him cry.

And yes, he was screaming and purple, but somehow my heart grew again and made room for another love of my life.

It wasn't a perfect delivery, though. I was reacting badly to anesthesia and caused The Man some huge amount of worry. Poor Goober had a ton of fluid in his lungs that had to be cleared out and all in all we had the nurses running around in a small panic.

Once my vomiting was under control and I was simply an odd shade of greenish blue and shaking uncontrollably, I was deemed a-ok and ready to head back to see my family. Goober was already in the room being fawned all over by everyone.

And he certainly was adorable.

And he still is!

And then there was Munchkin

The summer of 2001 was a tough one for me. I was hugely pregnant in South Florida, which is way too close to the equator for anyone to be pregnant during the summer months. I believe that health insurance plans should cover a flight, hotel, and hospital stay in a cold climate for mothers living in any latitude lower than 30. I mean, most plans cover the epidural, right? Living for months as a swollen watermelon in 90+ degree temperatures is equally cruel.

But I digress.

So I was hugely pregnant, hot, sweaty, a mother of a very active toddler, newly single, and living with my parents.

Not exactly how I had expected my life to be at 24 years old.

Sometime in the first few days of August I acquired a gigantic hemorrhoid that caused me to cry like a baby and beg my obstetrician to induce my labor. I knew my baby was ready, I knew she was overcooked, and all I could think about was getting her out of me.

My evil obstetrician looked through my teary eyed pleas and denied any sort of induction. I was sent home to cry for another week.

My sister and I took to taking long walks in the evenings trying to push me into labor. She bought me Raspberry Leaf Tea and forced me to drink it. We waited. And waited. And waited some more. During one of these walks I said to my sister "If for some reason I have to go in for a c-section, will you come in with me?" And my sister responded quickly, "Of course, honey."

That is what we call foreshadowing, my friends.

August 8th was my due date and I had still had no signs of labor. So I did the unthinkable... the thing your mother may have done back in the 60s and 70s... but the thing that is severely frowned on by today's standards.

I drank castor oil.

And then I spent the next hour or so in the bathroom wanting to die and being just a little worried I would pass my baby right there in the toilet along with everything I'd eaten throughout my entire pregnancy.

But you know what? After that hour was done, I went into labor.

Good, strong, real, contractions regularly every 4 minutes labor.

I arrived at the hospital in good spirits knowing that finally I would be having my baby. I was admitted, it was confirmed that I was dialating, and then the pain really started.

The pain was so bad I actually tried to run away from my body at one point. I literally got out of the bed, bared my gigantic white ass to the room, and tried to run away from the pain.

It didn't work.

While waiting for the saint that was the anesthesiologist to bring me an epidural I screamed at my mother and sister and threw small items at them when they giggled.

And then the epidural came and all was good.

I endured the humiliating "checks" like a champ. Every hour or so a nurse would come in and violate me in ways that I would never allow a man I loved to do, give a report to the room, and walk out.

And then the nurse made a strange face when she "checked" me. And she called in another nurse, who also fisted "checked" me. And they both made faces at each other. And the told me the baby was breach.... they thought....

So then my doctor came in and she also "checked" me and she also made a strange face. And then the nurse did it again and the other nurse did it again and I didn't even have time to be concerned with the fact that I was being passed around like a drunk stripper at a bachelor party because what the hell was wrong with my baby??!

So the doctor ordered an ultrasound machine to be brought in and that's when they discovered that my little girl was preparing to enter the world face first.

All that poking and prodding the nurses were doing, trying to figure out what part of my baby they were feeling, was to my poor little girl's face.

After an hour or so more of labor baby hadn't moved at all and that's when my doctor told me she wanted me to go in for surgery. It was time to get my little girl out... she'd been stuck in the birth canal for just too long and hadn't made even a smidge of progress. There was no way I was going to be able to deliver naturally.

So I agreed. And my sister's face went white.

It was about two milliseconds before I was somehow transported into the operating room and they were prepping me for surgery. I was scared-to-death while they prepped me. I kept turning to the anesthesiologist and asking him to get my sister (who evidently couldn't come in until I was good and prepped) and finally finally she was there.

And as I laid there on my back, my sister looked over the half sheet placed at my neck and said over and over again "Can you feel that??!?" "Are you sure you can't feel that??!?" "Oh my Gosh!" and was great comfort to me in my time of need.

And then there was a huge amount of tugging and pulling... and then she cried. And then I cried. And then they showed me her beautiful face with her bruised little eyes because the nurses had poked them so much while "checking" me and my heart immediately doubled in size with love for her.

And then the doctor said to the nurse "Hand me that bladder."

And that's when my sister asked the anethesiologist "Is it warm in here?"

And then there was much commotion to "GET THE SISTER OUT" before she passed out cold on the floor.

She came into the world at 4:42 AM on August 9th, 2001, weighing in at 9 pounds, 8 ounces (remember how I knew she was overcooked the week before?? yeah....) and today she is EIGHT.

Happy Birthday, Munchkin!

Did you know that rats can't vomit?

They can't... and they can't burp, either. Weird, huh?

Kids can vomit, though....

Monday was my birthday and that's when I awoke to the first sick kid. Munchkin had a fever and generally just felt like crap so I let her stay home from school.

In doing so I gave up my birthday lunch, but such is life. She was such a good sick kid, too. She basically just curled up in blankets, watched TV, and slept.

That night I dragged her out for a birthday dinner with my family because I'm a bad mommy who cares more about celebrations than her child's welfare.... and her temperature was under 100 so I figured she'd live.

At dinner there was much fun and ruckus. My friend, Jenny, tagged along as she had just flown in from PA that afternoon. I think my family may have frightened her a bit... but I'm sure she'll get over it. I received gifts of 8 Tervis Tumblers and a Wii Fit from my wonderful family. Sweet! I've been playing with the Fit every morning and it continues to insult me for being a fat ass, but in a very cute way.

Tuesday morning I awoke to two sick kids. Munchkin was still running a fever and Goober was starting one up. I packed Bug up for school and drove him in, letting the other two sleep in. Unfortunately by 10:30 I received a call from the school nurse. Again.

So Tuesday and Wednesday was spent with me emptying bowls of vomit, taking temperatures, encouraging kids to sleep, settle down, watch Disney. Oh, it's been fun around here. Today Goober and Munchkin were well enough to head back to school but Bug's temperature has been all over the place and the poor kid just feels terrible.

And me? I'm just exhausted.

5 is so NOT a baby

Today is Goober's 5th birthday. He's the first of his pre school class to turn 5 and he is just SO proud. I, on the other hand, am a wreck. He's my youngest, my last, and he's definitely no baby anymore. There will be tears shed today by me.

I dropped him at school this morning, 18 Spiderman cupcakes in hand. Tonight we'll have a party at my parents and we'll continue the weekend as an all out birthday extravaganza, parties all over the place! Pictures will follow.

But for now? A Goober montage.

This is the first picture we ever took of him with our own camera. It's actually a camera phone picture from The Man's phone at the time. He stayed in that Boppy for a good two months as it seemed to be the only place he'd sleep.

Here he is at his first visit to the park where he really got to play. He loved the swing. The wind in his face thrilled him!

One he was on his feet we were in for trouble. As a mom we're always encouraging our babies to take those first steps. What are we thinking?

Goober has always had such an animated personality. He's a comedian and has been trying to get us all to laugh since he could first laugh himself.

When he was about three we couldn't EVER go to a restaurant without him hiding under the table. He loved to go down there when we weren't paying close enough attention and pop out to surprise us.

Always inventive, always entertaining.

He has no problems making new friends, adults, kids, animals, whatever. He's the first to introduce himself in any situation and has no fear at all of anyone. If his outgoing personality keeps up, Goober is sure to go places. Goober for President, 2040! He's gonna change the world. :)