Happy Birthday to Me! Fini.

February 2010 ~ I turned 41.

This was the best birthday ever!

On my birthday proper, I was awakened at ten past six in the morning when a little boy in footie pajamas climbed into my bed.  Sam crawls into bed with us most mornings.  Always on my side.  He pulls himself up, arranges his head on my pillow then says, "Covers."  I share my covers.  Then he says, "Hugs."  I share my hugs.  Then we go back to sleep, or something close to it, for a few more minutes.  But, my birthday was a little bit different.

"Hold hand," he said after we had assumed the cuddle position.  I gave him my hand.  Carefully, in the semi-darkness, he made a point of interlocking our fingers, just so, until he could quietly announce, "There.  Good."  With his free hand, he started stroking my hair.  Then he began to gently explore my face.  "Cheeks.  Chin.  Nose," he whispered in my ear as he came to each feature.  This was peculiar, but sweet, and not loud enough to wake Daddy, so we did not go back to sleep that morning.  We just loved on each other in Sam's tactile way.

Not too much later we were joined by Jonah, who took up his usual spot between Hubband and me.  It was so late in the morning, there was no point in sending either boy back to bed, so we did the family cuddle for awhile, until I finally had to drag myself to the shower.

On my way out of bed, I mentioned to Jonah that it was my birthday.  Jonah likes birthdays.  He was so excited he hurled himself at me for a full body hug.  I caught him in mid-air.  It was rather like trying to catch a bicycle.  But, the hug was sincere.  I know this, because he made no mention of cake (his main reason for liking birthdays).

When Sam heard this he said, "Happy birthday to you!  Way to go!  Good job!  Well done!  Happy birthday, Mommy!"  Sam, who four months ago didn't even say "Mommy" with any consistency, wished me Happy Birthday!

This was the best birthday ever!!!!

My mother and my sister and my sister-in-law and I all went out for a nice dinner and ate way too much, including dessert and an $11 margarita and I paid, for once, though they tried to not let me.

Hubband and I, to celebrate my birthday, spent a whole weekend just being with the kids at home all together.  I didn't spend four hours on Saturday afternoon shopping for groceries and diapers.  We didn't even go to church on Sunday.  It's just a building, after all, and our particular brand of building is a high school gymnasium.  But we were a Church with a capital C, the five of us at home, basking in His word and love and blessings.

Did I mention that this was the best birthday ever?

When I was 23, for a class of some kind, we had to say what we wanted out of life.  I said I wanted to get married, have four kids, boy, girl, boy, girl, in that order, go to law school and write a book.  It was a bit of a throw away line, but ultimately true at the time and essentially fulfilled now.  I'm married, and happy about it.  I have three kids not four, but I'm good.  Note I said I wanted to go to law school, not become a lawyer.  So, check.  Note also that I only said I wanted to write a book, not publish one.  Well, I've done neither.  But, I'm not dead yet.  And God has blessed me with things I didn't even know, when I was 23, that I wanted.  Thank you, God.  So, you see, I am right where I always wanted to be.  No complaints. 

This was the best birthday ever!!!!!

This will be the last installment of my Happy Birthday Series.  At least for this year.  Thank you to everyone who came by this month to help me celebrate.

Happy Birthday, Abby (the best babysitter in the world)!

Abby was born February 24, 1994.  She is our babysitter.  She also just happens to be the best babysitter in the world.

She reads stories.  She plays games outside and in.  She feeds the kids snack and  cleans up the mess they make under the table.  She is homeschooled so she is available during the day (when she is not taking college chemistry!).  She has told me I pay her too much.  She is sweet and kind and patient and loves my kids and my kids love her.  I bet we'd have to ask her mother to find out that she is not perfect.  But even if she isn't, I would be very blessed to have my daughter grow up to be like her.  Speaking of her mom, she is the best babysitter's mother in the world in that she almost always drops her off and picks her up even on super short notice.

During her non-babysitting hours, she is a very creative cake decorator.  I ordered a Wall-E cake for Sam's birthday, and she not only baked it, but brought it and all her gear to my house so that Jonah could help her decorate it.  Oh and it was delicious!!!!!   But, not even her best work.  Scroll down for more pictures of her creations (Which I stole off her facebook page.  I hope she does not mind.)

Wall-E
 

Alien Cupcakes

Those mushrooms are made out of meringue.  Can you believe that?

Happy Sweet 16 Abby!!!!!!

Happy Birthday to Me, V

February 1976 ~ I turned seven

I don't remember the party, or the gifts, or even the cake.  What I do remember it that my grandparents took me out to dinner.  Just me.  They came to my house and picked me up, after dark.  It was like a date.  I was so excited.

We drove there in my grandfather's Oldsmobile.  I know this, because my whole life my grandfather drove an Oldsmobile.  During the drive, there was a story on the radio about being trained as an opera singer.  I thought that sounded like fun, and asked my grandparents if they thought I could be an opera singer.  I don't remember what they said, but I know what they were thinking.

They took me to a restaurant called Granny's Attic.  The wait-staff sang "Someone's in the attic with Granny," to the tune of Someone's in the Kitchen with Dinah.  I had so much fun.

Happy Birthday, Female Author Edition

I fancy myself a writer, because I love to write.  I don't call myself a writer, because I don't actually, you know, write.  Well, not with enough consistency and discipline.  I think about it.  I plan to.  I mean to.  I probably will someday.  Or maybe I won't.  I'm not too worked up about it either way.

However, there are several women who do (or did) write, and happen to have birthdays in February.   They are, in no particular order:

Amy Tan

February 19, 1952

Carson McCullers

February 19, 1917

Laura Ingalls Wilder

February 7, 1867

Alice Walker

February 9, 1944

Toni Morrison

February 18, 1931

Erma Bombeck

February 21, 1927

Judy Blume

February 12, 1938

Gertrude Stein

February 3, 1874

Ayn Rand

February 2, 1905

 

There is amazing talent on this list.  Amazing!!!!  Click on their names to get more information about any of these women or their writing. 

Oh, and Sarah Palin had a birthday this month too, but just because you can get a book published does not make you a writer.

Happy Birthday to Me, IV

February 1975 ~ I turned six.

My mother baked my cake, frosted it, and traced the silhouette of a Holly Hobby doll with a toothpick in the icing.  Then, very carefully, she filled in her outline with colored sugar.  As a mother and baker now myself, I know how unpredictable and errant colored sugar can be.  I am more impressed now than I was then.  Then, I was just pleased to have such a cool cake.

I had three Holly Hobbie rag-dolls.  Though there was a collection of dolls, Holly and her friends, my three dolls were all Holly.  That was okay with me.  I used to pretend that I was the mother of triplets.  I thought that would be great.  I'm older know.  Wiser.

Happy Birthday to Me.

Happy Birthday to Me, III

February 1973 ~ I turned four.

This is the first birthday that I remember. Which is kind of amazing, since I have many, many memories of life before I turned four. My sister jokes that I remember the womb.  You would think that a birthday, say my second or third, would stand out.

My mother asked me what kind of cupcakes I wanted and I said, “blue.” So, blue cupcakes I got. I can not find the pictures, but I know they exist, of my mother and me in the kitchen frosting those cupcakes. I am in my nightgown, sitting on the counter, licking 1963-Buick-aquamarine-blue frosting off of a spoon.

The other thing I remember, is that at the end of the party, I was trying very hard to say, “Good bye, thank you for coming,” to all of my adult guests, when really all I wanted to do was play, uninterrupted, with my new birthday treasures.

And, it was the first birthday where I had to share the spotlight with a sibling. My sister, Tricia, four months old. Scrawniest baby you ever saw. All she could do was lie there, ugly and puce. I didn’t see what all the fuss was about.

Happy birthday to me!

Since I can't find the cupcake picture, you will have to settle for the cheesecake picture, taken around the same time.  This is my great-grandmother, my cousins, my sister, and me.  I am the one in the bikini.

Happy Birthday Mr. Travolta/Theme Thursday

Well, Theme Thursday has rolled around again. This week's theme is MIRROR. The first thing I thought of when I saw the theme, was a disco ball, which made me think of disco dancing, which made me think of Saturday Night Fever, which made me think of John Travolta, who just happens to have a birthday this month, which means he fits in nicely with the month's Happy Birthday Series. So, from the killing-two-birds-with-one-stone department, and without further ado, I bring you this.

John Travolta was born February 18, 1954. He became a house hold name in 1975 for playing Vinnie Barbarino in Welcome Back, Kotter on TV, complete with over-the-top catch phrases (Up your nose with a rubber hose!) and teen idol hair. A seemingly inauspicious start, but in 1977 he was nominated for an Oscar for his roll in Saturday Night Fever. By the 80s, he was a has-been of embarrassing proportions. Then in 1994, he had the monster of all comebacks when Quentin Tarantino cast him in Pulp Fiction, earning him a second Oscar nod. By all accounts he is still doing okay.

John Travolta is a good actor. I know this, because I don't really like him. I never want to see anything he is in. But, when I do, I always end up forgetting that he is him, which I suspect is the point of acting. (This is in marked contrast to Tom Cruise, whom I also do not like, but I never forget he is him.)

Happy Birthday Mr. Travolta!

For more Theme Thursday entries, click here.

For more entries in February's Happy Birthday Series, click here.

Happy Birthday to Me, Again

February 1970 ~ I turned one.

I am going to be honest here.  I don't remember it.  Nothing.

I don't remember the yellow cotton dress I wore.

I don't remember the homemade cake shaped like a pink elephant.  (A pink elephant?  Really?  Like the kind drunk people are rumored to see?  Surely not.)

I don't remember that my cousins Johnny and Janine, who were born the previous December and April respectively, were watching and taking notes to see how a one-year-old was supposed to comport herself.  I hope I set a good example.

I don't remember that we celebrated my grandfather"s birthday too, with a nice rectangular cake full of candles.  He would have been 46.  (Forty-six?  Can that be?  I'm forty-one!)

I don't remember that both of my parents were there.  Together.  Though I do remember that by my fifth birthday they were not.

February 1974 ~ I turned five

On my fifth birthday my father had to drive in from out of town to visit.  He gave me a bicycle.  He took me to the parking lot of the church next to the apartment complex where we (my mother and sister and I) lived, to ride it.   He stayed only a few hours.  I'm sure there was probably a party for me that year too, but I don't remember it.

Happy Birthday Mr. President

Ronald Reagan was born on February 6,  1911.  He was the 40th President of the United States.  He liked jelly beans, had a really skinny wife, and got shot.  He also looks just like the actor Ronald Reagan, only older.

Three other Presidents were born in February.  They are...

William Henry Harrison

Born February 9, 1773.  He was the first President to die in office, after only thirty-one days.  This also makes him the president with the shortest term.  And, he looks an awful lot like the British actor, James Cromwell.

Abraham Lincoln

 

Born February 12, 1809.  He was first President ever assassinated, and he emancipated the slaves.  He was very tall, his wife was mentally ill, and he looked a little like actor Harry Dean Stanton with a beard.

George Washington

Born February 22, 1732.  He was the first President.  He was very tall for his day, had no children, liked ice cream, and had false teeth made of wood.  He has no thespian likeness that I could find, but I am open to suggestions.


Happy Birthdays Misters President!!!!

Happy Birthday Mrs. Parks

Rosa Parks was born on February 4, 1913.  She is known as  the mother of the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s.

"I have learned over the years that when one's mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear." 

~ Rosa Parks 

She helped launch a nation wide boycott to end racial segregation of public services when she refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery Alabama bus to a white man in December, 1955.  Later in life she founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development to introduce young people to the importance of civil rights and Rosa's philosophy of  "quiet strength".  She died in 2005.

Happy Birthday, Mrs. Parks!

Happy Birthday Mr. Buttons/Theme Thursday

It is Theme Thursday once again, and this weeks theme is RED.  To accommodate this, I am posting Friday's "Happy Birthday..." post a little early.

Red Buttons was born February 5, 1919.  He was a noted comedian, film, and television actor from the 1940's until he death in 2006.  He was born Aaron Chwat but was given his stage name at 16 because of the way he and his flaming red hair looked in his bell hop uniform.  The name stuck.  Besides, Aaron Chwat is a funny name, but not in a good way.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Buttons!

Happy Birthday Dr. Blackwell

Elizabeth Blackwell was born on February 3, 1821.  She was the first woman to graduate from medical school in the United States.  Though she herself was British.

"For what is done or learned by one class of women becomes, by virtue of their common womanhood, the property of all women."

~ Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell

She was at first ridiculed, but later respected, by her peers.  She established clinics in New York City for poor women and their children, and opened her own medical school for women.  She encouraged good hygiene for good health, which was a bit revolutionary for her time.  She died in 1910.

Happy Birthday, Dr. Blackwell!

Happy Birthday Miss Dean

Millvina Dean was born on February 2, 1912.  When she was 10 weeks old, she survived the sinking of the Titanic.  Her life raft was rescued by the ship Carpathia, coincidentally the same ship upon which Frank Buckles, yesterday's birthday honoree, sailed to Europe to fight in WWI.

She lived the rest of her life in England where she spent many years as a British civil servant and avoiding her odd form of celebrity.  She finally embraced her role in history around the time the movie Titanic was released.  She died in 2009.

Happy Birthday, Miss Dean!

Happy Birthday Mr. Buckles

Frank Buckles is the world's only surviving World War I veteran.  He turned 109 today.  Congratulations, sir.

He joined the Army at 16 and fought in Europe.  During WWII he spent three years in a Japanese prison camp as a civilian prisoner of war.  After that, he was a cattle farmer in West Virginia.  More recently, he has become a driving force behind a WWI memorial.

Here are some of the stories he has stories to tell.