Gratuitous cuteness

This weekend we celebrated the 17th birthday of my oldest. His birthday is always during Lent, but this year it fell on a Sunday, so we gladly used the Sunday as a Little Easter line to celebrate his birth.  He was born five weeks early three days after I had returned from a visit to my sister who was studying at Oxford.  I may have told his birth story before, but it's a good one. It begins with the week before he was born:

Sometime early in 1997, My mom found plane tickets to England from Boston for $300, and so I rushed to get a new passport to go with her since we were living in Newport, Rhode Island, at the time. We had been married about 7 months at the time, but I was a little lonely for my mom and sister, who lived so far away.  I checked with my doctor first, who gave me permission since I would be only 34 weeks at the time. We had a wonderful week meandering the English countryside, visiting Olde Rectories, eating scones and clotted cream, and spending a day in London.

The day after I returned to the states, my husband's best friend from college came to visit for the weekend, we drove back up to Boston with him to see my husband's brother and the city. I remember having excruciating pain in my back during the drive up, but thought I just had to go to the bathroom. We spent the day touring historical sites in Boston and then I went to bed early while the boys went out. (We were 23 at the time.) My husband came home thinking I was mad at him because I was grumpy when he woke me up. The next day we showed up at Mass where we were going to meet other friends, and no sooner had we sat down, than I knew something was wrong. I either wet my pants or my water broke.  I rushed into the bathroom scared to death because I was only 35 weeks along and hid in a stall trying to think straight until my husband sent a random stranger in to find me. She calmed me down and told me we had plenty of time to get to the hospital. All I knew about water breaking was the "Get to the doctor right away!"  We called our parents from a pay phone, and then my husband drove like a maniac, speeding the 90 miles between Boston and Newport, praying he would get pulled over by a cop so he could say, "My wife is having a baby!" No luck. He did stop at Burger King, and as soon as we got checked in he started to eat the cheeses that were stocking the little fridge in room. The Newport hospital had a birthing center with all sorts of comforts for the father, like a mini-fridge, a pull-out couch, and a jacuzzi, which he also took advantage of. I have memories of him eating through labor, but he'll tell me that's revisionist history. His brother and friend also showed up with donuts a couple hours later.

Meanwhile, my parents literally raced to a plane - my mom even forgot her ID - and arrived 6 or 7 hours later, but by that time our little boy had been born. He presented posterior - hence the back pain - with his little fist clenched up by his face, so needless to say, I had to have some stitches. In some of the photos of his first hours, you can see blood splashed up by my pillow, which is part of the reason I never have felt strongly inclined to have a home birth. Although early, he was still six pounds, 11 ounces, but he hardly had any eyebrows, and he turned quite orange in the next couple of days.  My husband had to buy a carseat before we could leave the hospital, and he and his brother had to put together the crib we rarely used. Our bedroom in the half of a house we rented in Newport was so small that you had to kneel on the foot of our double bed to put him in his crib, and to open a dresser drawer, you had to sit on the side of the bed. We should have just used a drawer for a crib. Ah, the good old days!

As an inexperienced mother without close relatives living nearby, I didn't recognize the early signs of labor, nor did I realize how fussy this little guy was as an infant until I had other babies who didn't cry all the time that they weren't sucking on something. But I was happy to nurse him all the time, or pop my little finger in his mouth, until he finally grew out of it. And he never has been a fussy kid since. For his seventeenth birthday, he didn't even have any requests for his birthday except a cake with a lot of frosting and knepp, the dumplings sauteed in butter that my mother-in-law makes. So we had lots of both for dinner last night, along with steak and lobster that my brother-in-law, the same one who used to live in Boston, caught two nights before.  It reminded us of the lobster dinner the hospital fed us after Joseph's birth, but much tastier.  Forget diabetes and Lenten fasting for a meal to celebrate life!

Photos of then and now:

March 1997

March 2014

and one more of his baby sister at 36 weeks. You can already see that she has the familial dimple chin. 

Beads and cake and resolutions

Watch out for flying beads!

I just licked the last bite of hip cake* off my fingers before uploading these photos.  We've cleaned up most of the dishes from our impromptu Mardi Gras party, and the recycling has been taken out.  We used to host a Mardi Gras party in Virginia because I could never get my act together to have a Christmas party, but I never thought I'd have one here, seeing as we're Yankees and all. But we live close enough to the parade route in town to walk to the parade, so I invited some friends to park at our house and walk, although my husband informed me that most people don't consider a mile a short walk.  So to compensate, we fed everyone jambalaya, brownies, and hip cakes. It was an "eat what you're giving up" party, so we also had chips, soda, beer and wine, cookies, and some people under age 10 had gum. 

Showing off the loot and eating moon pies.
All of these beads are now in a bag to be given back to a friend who has a float.

It was also a happy birthday party for my oldest, whose actual fourteenth birthday is tomorrow. He has grown about 6 inches this year, and did not ask for Legos.



He started out like this.

I'm still formulating my Lenten resolutions, but among them will be giving up sweets and talking about getting old, avoiding mulling on regrets, and reading some of the books I bought last year and never read. At the top of the pile are a couple of local authors, one a priest from Malayasia on mission here who has written about the saints and the other a man who lived with the homeless for a year.  At confession the other day, the priest told me to sign up to take Communion to shut-ins, so I suppose I have to do that. (Does that count as a spiritual and a corporal act of mercy?) And that same priest has organized small group study circles at our parish and assigned people to certain groups, so I will be going to one of those. This priest is very proactive, but also much loved, so he doesn't come off as pushy.

Now I am going to sleep off my sugar coma before Mass tomorrow morning.

*Recipe for hip cakes:
-Heat oven to 350
-Combine one box yellow cake mix with 1 stick melted butter and 1 egg. Mix well and pat into 9x13 pan.
-Combine 8 oz cream cheese, 1 box powdered sugar, and 2 eggs. Mix well and spread on top of cake mix.
-Bake about 45 minutes until set and golden on edges.
-Eat one for each hip.

Indulging on memory lane

Today is a day of momentous occasion: My oldest is now thirteen. Today I am the mother of a teenager. Yikes. I’ve been looking through old photo albums and wondering how did he go from this to this?

Yesterday I sat at the park and watched my youngest laugh elatedly as she ran from swing to slide to jungle gym, and I wondered at how rarely I do this with her, just play at the park, while my oldest and I spent hours climbing and playing at various playgrounds. Of course, then we lived in an apartment with a teeny yard and now we have our own play gym in a big back yard and siblings with whom to play on it. I’m not sure that I want this stage of my life – mom of young kids hanging out at the park on sunny days – to end. The physical exhaustion of caring for babies has turned into the mental exhaustion of caring for big kids. One minute I wish they were babies again, the next I’m throwing them all out the door.

If I had had more foresight, I would've done what an aunt did for my older brother and me (my sister doesn't remember getting one) and put together a teenager box: deodorant, razor, binoculars, a book on how to talk to girls... I’m glad this kid who just went through two pant sizes in 6 months still likes to play on jungle gyms.

Here are two cuties: my oldest son and his dad, who was not a teenager.