Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin'....

Today marks another shared milestone with my sister...she sent her oldest child off to his first day of preschool, and I sent my oldest child off to his first day of college.

Where has the time gone? I am not one to get melancholy about the start of a new school year like some of my friends. On the flip side, I am also not doing cartwheels like other friends of mine (note: I could never, EVER do a cartwheel...which is one of the reasons I never realized my dream of being a Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader...so sad...).

People always say spring is a season of rebirth. I think it's fall. The new school year brings so many new opportunities and adventures. As I send one off to college, I have Cameron (son #3) getting ready to embark on his first year of High School. How did THAT happen? I am supposed to have toddlers and elementary school aged children. I am soooooo not old enough to have these almost men as children. This only goes to prove my theory that aliens have abducted my children. I never said it was a GOOD theory...but come on, have y'all ever smelled teenaged boys
shoes? There is no way that funk is NOT alien. Anyway...

In two years, Russell will graduate from High School, and Paige will graduate from Middle School. That means in two years, I will have two children old enough for College. TWO. Years.

In four years, Cameron will graduate from High School, and JP will graduate from College. In. FOUR. Years. In four years, both of my sister's boys will be in school. The little roly poly boy who hasn't walked yet will walk into a classroom and start his school adventure.

When I was little, I used to think, "when I am 13, 16, 18, 21....things will be so different and so much better." I wished the years away. Now I look at my children's milestones, and I see how fast time really does fly. In fact, I think for every milestone, I get a new wrinkle. By the time Paige graduates, I will look like a flipping Shar Pei!

In eight years, I will be (gasp) 50 years old. By then, all four of my children (God willin' and the creek don't rise) should be out of school. Hopefully I will have a shred of my sanity left.

But for now, I will enjoy this last week of summer, and I won't even think about how many days it is until Christmas Vacation (121, by the way).

You've Got Mail

All this talk about birthdays got me to thinking about one of my favorite parts of my birthday (besides the cake -- which was conspicuously absent this year). I love going to the mail box and spying a brightly colored envelope addressed to me.

There is just something about a card, whether it is store bought or handmade, that warms my heart. With the prevalence of email and e-cards, the number of cards I get during the year is minuscule. But the cards that do come...whether it's birthday, Christmas, Mother's Day, Arbor Day make me so happy.

I admit I'm not the best at sending cards for every occasion (just ask my BFF), but when I actually do remember to that I need to buy a card, I'm the annoying twit standing in the card aisle reading card after card after card trying to find just the right one. Card buying between my father & I has reached epic proportions. He has been known to hold onto a card for almost a year if he stumbles upon a particularly funny/obscene/offensive one. I will go to several different stores to find the most funny/obscene/offensive card I can find. What can I say...the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. And yes, I am also one of those "crafty people," so on occasion, I may even break into my craft vault and MAKE a card with my own two hands. Quit laughing...it's been known to happen.

Of course, once I BUY the card, getting it stamped and mailed is a whole 'nother hullabaloo. I really have the best of intentions, but sometimes I get distracted, and the card I so carefully selected, or worse, lovingly made never makes it off my desk. (If you saw my desk, you would understand - Jimmy Hoffa may be be buried in here.) But, by some small miracle, it does get a stamp, and it does get mailed and not lost in my van, rest assured it was no small feat.

Gotta run...the mail truck just stopped off at the mailbox, and I think I caught a glimpse of some colored envelopes.

Worst Birthday Present Evah!

Birthdays have always been special to me. I love birthdays. My most memorable birthday is, ironically enough, one I can remember only one thing about. My mother wasn't there. I was turning 7, which to my six year old self was a VERY. BIG. DEAL.

I don't remember the theme I picked out or the flavor of my cake. I don't remember which of my friends attended. All I remember is thinking my party was ruined because my dad had to run it.

Where was my mother? In the hospital in labor with my baby sister who would wind up being born on MY birthday. The "ruined" birthday party set the tone for my feelings toward my sister for years.

Good grief...it was bad enough she stole my birthday thunder, but then I had to have joint birthday parties with her (I am pretty sure that in reality it was only a couple times, but in my mind, they were all lumped together).

As the oldest child, I was constantly being told to be nice to her because she was "the baby," "the youngest," "my sister." She was my shadow...and an obnoxious one, at that. She cut the hair off my Chrissy doll, ripped heads off my Barbies, and wreaked havoc wherever she went. Whenever she did something wrong, *I* would get into trouble because I should know better.

And then, something happened....

She started growing up. Oh, she could still be a major pain in my backside, but when she was acting like a semi-civilized human, I noticed some things. She was witty. She liked the same music as me. She was fiercely loyal. She was fun to be around. Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit! The brat who ruined my birthday was actually now my friend.

Oh, don't get me wrong...there are times when I still want to throttle her. She has a memory like an elephant, and she pops off with all sorts of things I'd rather not remember...like the time I convinced her our dog's AKC papers were actually her adoption papers (man, did I get in trouble for that).

She's married now (to a Saint of a guy), and she has two beautiful boys that I get to watch while she's at work. They are too young to hear the stories about their mother now, but there will come a day when I get to fill their heads with all of my memories. Be afraid, be very, very afraid.

Happy Birthday to the only present I still have after 35 years. :-D

The Name Game

A rose by any other name would not be a rose.

Naming a child is like navigating shark infested waters. You could get out unscathed, or you could wind up as chum. In Jason's Family, all of the children in his generation are named "J" names...as were all of their parents. Thankfully, Jason's cousin and older brother broke the "J" streak with their children.

When I got pregnant with baby #1, there was a teeny, tiny part of me that wanted to name him Barnum Nicholas Bailey. We'd call him Nick, of course, but on paper, he'd be Barnum N. Bailey (say it out loud; you'll get it...and if you don't, I can't help you LOL). I was thisclose to doing it, but ultimately decided against it. Wanting to avoid "J" names, I thought Patrick Joseph would be perfect, and we could call him PJ.

Jason's younger brother's name is Joseph, so I thought we would dodge drama by throwing that in the name. Jason didn't want there to be any hurt feelings from his older brother, so we added John to the mix. John Patrick Joseph Bailey was born. He was never, ever, EVER called John by the family. When he got to school and someone called him John, he wouldn't answer. John was not his name, and he had no problem telling people, even teachers, that.

John Patrick morphed into JP, and family and friends used them fairly interchangeably. (There is nothing more satisfying than yelling, "JohnPatrickJosephBailey, get your butt downstairs." Seriously, try it.) To us, JP was a perfectly acceptable nickname. It was not babyish, odd, or embarrassing. winner, winner, chicken dinner.

Sidebar: My brother was named after my grandfather, who went his whole life by a nickname. When my brother was born, he got not only my grandfather's given name, but his nickname as well. My cousin was the fourth with his his given name, so he, like his Father, had a nickname. When the guys hit high school, they decided to go by their given names instead of their nicknames. I still have trouble to this day calling them by anything other than their nicknames. Old dog, new tricks and all that nonsense....

When JP graduated this Spring, he announced that he wanted to go by the name John. I laughed. Probably directly in his face,if truth be told. That sort of fizzled out...he has one Uncle, one great Uncle, and one older cousin named John.

So, this week, he decides that he wants to be called Jack. Jack? His rationale was that John Patrick is too long, and he is over JP. Hmmph. He was upstairs with his brother, and I called them downstairs to do some menial grunt chore for me yesterday, and calling, "Cameron & Jack" just didn't have the same oomph for me.

I can see him introducing himself as Jack when he starts college. It may even catch on. Jack Bailey is kind of a cool rocker name, but John Patrick Joseph Bailey is an excellent New York Philharmonic Name. Just sayin'.

Then again, I could always start calling him Barnum....

Stick (People) it to Ya!

Yeah,I'm one of those Moms. I have a stick person family on the back of my mini-van...along with stickers from my kids' schools and places we have visited. I even have a purse with the name of my son's school on it.

And you know what? I love my stickers and magnets. Plain is boring. I don't eat vanilla ice cream because it's too plain. I may be many, many things, but boring is not something I strive to be. It's bad enough that I am driving a silver mini van (of which there are approximately 647 MILLION exact same ones on the road). Even before I had the stick people, I had unique stickers on my vehicles (the most memorable being "White Trash Goddess" -- oh, how I miss that sticker). Now, I do not have our names below our stick figures. I think that's just asking for trouble. I never had the kids' names embroidered on their backpacks, and other than sports jerseys, they didn't have their names on clothing.

I think the notion that by having the stickers, it makes my family a target of predators, is a load of hooey. Even if I had not one sticker on my MINI-VAN, the sheer fact that I am driving a MINI-VAN probably indicates I have children. And honestly. how many times am I alone in the van? Most time, we look like one of those clown cars at the circus...chock full of kids.

This is not to say I don't take the safety of my children seriously. I am realistic, though. I have my kids' pictures on my Facebook Page (with the privacy settings at the highest level). My kids' pictures have been in the paper, on the schools' websites, and on their own Facebook pages (along with all of THEIR friends' pages)...I think my stick people family is the least of my worries.

Besides, I think the stick person version of me is totally cute.

On the side

I am a notoriously picky eater. The list of foods I won't eat is miles longer than the list of foods I will eat. I am funny about tastes, smells and textures. My mother used to tell me that "once it was cooked, I'd never be able to taste (fill in the blank)." I always tasted it.

Family legend has it that when I was a baby/toddler, I would eat anything...pheasant, goose, rabbit, muskrat (I really hope they are kidding about that one). I say, if they actually fed me that, it's no wonder I am so picky now.

Going to a restaurant with me used to be like the scenes in "When Harry Met Sally." My best friend loved to watch me order a Cobb Salad and totally deconstruct it. Jason says I don't really eat salads....just bowls of lettuce with carrots tossed in. I do try new things when I go out to restaurants, and I really, really, REALLY try not to be overly obnoxious when I order something (after all, I do not care to have my entree served with a side of spit).

In spite of my food idiosyncrasies, I tried to make sure I didn't pass them on to my children. Yeah. That didn't work so well. If I was the queen of "on the side," JP was the Emperor of "plain." I mean, plaaaaaaaaaaain. Dry white toast (a la Elwood Blues), pancakes and waffles with no butter or syrup, pasta with no butter or sauce, hamburgers were patty & bun (god help us if we went through the drive thru and they messed the order up), cereal with no milk...and on and on. The child would hoover broccoli, but he wouldn't eat a peanut butter & jelly sandwich.

Packing the child a lunch for school was quite the show. He survived, though, and now, he eats all sorts of stuff (most of which I still won't eat). The first time I went to Subway with him and he ordered something other than a meatball sub, I about fell over. I listened to him ask for lettuce, tomatoes, onions, peppers,and on and on, and I swear, I turned to him and asked,"who's going to eat THAT?!?!" He ate it.

Cameron & Russell will eat bait, I mean, sushi, like it's going out of style. They all love seafood. You would think growing up in Annapolis that I would, too. Nope. Dirty little secret #625: I hate crabs. I will pick them for hours on end, but I will not eat them. I don't like crab cakes, crab imperial, or crab anything except hot crab dip and cream of crab soup. And fish....ugh. This drives Jason nuts, but I will only eat canned tuna, not fresh. Why, I don't know. I have tried fresh tuna, and I just can't eat it. I do love shrimp and lobster, though. :-)

I went to Norway several years back with my best friend, Tami, and I made a concerted effort to eat things I normally wouldn't eat. I ate reindeer, escargot and scallops (not all mixed together -- are you nuts?). I survived them all. Would I go out of my way to order them again? Probably not, but I can say I have tried them. Once.

I made chocolate muffins last week, and I put zucchini in them. Guess what? You couldn't even taste it.

It was.....soap poisoning!

Since it is 100* here today, naturally my mind drifted towards thoughts of snow...which led to thoughts of Christmas...which led to thoughts of one of my favorite movies ever, "A Christmas Story." There is a scene in the movie where Ralphie's father (aka "The Old Man") was fixing the furnace. In the movie, Ralphie narrates it as, "my father wove a tapestry of obscenities that as far as we know is still hanging in space over Lake Michigan." In yet another of my favorite scenes, Ralphie gets to help the Old Man change a flat tire. Ralphie is holding the hubcap filled with the lug nuts, and he drops them. In the snow. At night. He reacts by saying, "Oh, fuuuuuuuuuuuuuudge," only, well, he says the real word. He gets his mouth washed out with soap, and there is another great moment where he compares the tastes of all the soaps he has "tasted."

I grew up in a house where "shut up" was a bad word. I was the oldest of three kids. Like Ralphie, I tasted my share of soap. Of course, as a child I vowed I would never do anything as barbaric as wash my children's mouth out with soap. Jason grew up surrounded by lots of "colorful" language. Once free from the threat of blindness from soap poisoning, my vocabulary became peppered with expletives, too.

Now, no one wants their precious angel to have a vocabulary that would make a sailor blush. So, I found myself, in the bathroom, with a bar of soap in my hand saying, "if I EVER hear you say that again, I am washing your mouth out with soap." All four of my children have had their mouths washed out at various points in their lives.

Four years ago, when Cameron was in 5th grade, "crap" was suddenly the cool word to say. Evidently, it was taken off the "bad word" list, and no one had the decency to tell me. Kids in school were saying it, some teachers were saying it, and no-one was batting an eye. Then it was "pissed off" (and all the variations) that became en vogue. I told my kids that just because everyone else was saying it, that didn't mean I wanted to hear it. A gaggle of 12 year boys saying, "oh, crap" every other word truly grated on my nerves (and lordy, that "Oh, snap!" phase just about sent me to the loony bin. They are lucky I didn't wash their mouths out for that, or else they would all have been stricken with soap poisoning blindness).

I know my boys swear. I know they listen to music with swear words. They know I swear...that is no secret. But still, it's a bit disconcerting to actually hear the words coming from my boys' mouths. When JP would plug his iPod in to the car speakers, he used to skip certain songs. Or if he "forgot," he'd at least give a quick,"oops, sorry," while changing the song.

The day of his graduation from DeMatha, on the way home, JP played a string of hand-selected songs that were hilarious...and borderline obscene. Jason almost wrecked the car he was laughing so hard. I was torn between laughing at JP's audacity and being appalled that he was comfortable enough testing his newly found freedoms. So, it's no surprise that I lectured him while laughing so hard I had tears in my eyes. Proud mommy moment, for sure.

In another 20-40 years when my children make me a grandmother, I fully expect to get a phone call saying, "Mom, I don't know WHERE they heard such a word, but I had to wash their mouths out with soap." Let's just hope they didn't hear it from me.

**Side note** as I was typing this, my three year old daycare buddy said to the other kids,"What the Hell?!?". Seriously. I'm telling you I can't make this stuff up.