Its My Birthday And I'll Be Pissed If I Want To!

So I mentioned yesterday that Friday is my birthday. One year closer to 30. Believe it or not, I am actually VERY EXCITED to turn 30. As of Friday I'll have 3 more years to wait. I'm not wanting my life to fly by or anything, but because I started my family at 21, I am not living the typical life of a 20-something. I have responsibilities, and on the infrequent occasions that I do get to go "party", I am always paying for it the next day because a hangover + 3 kids is NOT very much fun.

Plus, with 30, there seems to be more an acceptance from other mothers. Well older mothers, that is. Sure I have friends my age who have kids, but a lot of the mothers I encounter at my children's activities are in their 30's and honestly, they treat me as "less of a mother" because I am still in my 20's. They do. Have any of you other younger mother's experienced this snobbery? It's not fun. Nor is it fair. And THEN when they find out that my husband is 11 1/2 years older than I am..well that always brings a whole new level of interesting looks and comments directed at me.

So, back to "Friday is my birthday." You see, I am big on making sure everyone in my life has a great birthday. Last year I threw a surprise party for my husband, just family, but he had never had one before, and I thought it would be fun to surprise him. I put a TON of effort into it. All the way to hiding homemade pizzas in our basement freezer, and buying the beer and liquor and hiding it as well. This year for my mom's I planned a fantastic menu and proceeded to give her "the best gift she had ever received."

Since I put so much effort into the birthdays for the people I love, is it so much to ask that they do the same for me? I love my husband to death, but being handed a gift still in the bag from the store it came from and a steak dinner (when I'm not even a huge steak fan) is not exactly putting much effort into it for me. But I know my husband, and I know that he really does try. He just doesn't quite "get it". Its my mom that is letting me down this year.

She stopped by last night and in the midst of our conversation she says,

"So, what do you want to do for your birthday?"

"Um..I don't know. Whatever."

"Well, do you want to go out? Do you want me to make something for dinner? What do you want me to get you. Just tell me," she proceeded to say.

"Mom, I don't know. I really don't. To be honest I hadn't even thought much about it. I've had a stressful day today."

"Well, you'll have to let me know so I'll know what to do."

Okay, I know it's nice that she is wanting to do something for me. But why do I have to plan it? I didn't ask her what SHE wanted to do for her birthday. I just said, "You need to come over here at 1pm, we'll have some appetizers, play some games, and then eat an early dinner." I mean it was HER day..she shouldn't have had to be worried about planning anything.

So, I'm just a bit down this year over my birthday. I found it incredibly discouraging that I am in charge of planning my own birthday. Again. I don't get why the people I love can't take notes from the birthday's I give them and give me the same in return. All I really want for my birthday is to be with my family and NOT have to plan anything. But that doesn't seem to be flying with them this year.

"Happy Birthday to me.."

I Need A Recharge!

I have been under a lot of stress lately between money concerns, and Twinkletoes' poop..I am a tearful mess about 45% of the day.

Twinkletoes' got "backed up" again this past weekend, and this time, she just COULD NOT get it out. She would scream, cry and smack me whenever I made her sit on the potty and just TRY to go. She was traumatized, I was traumatized, and SB kept Saying to me, "it's okay baby, I know how you feel".

"Really? You know how I feel? Were you the one in there watching our 3 1/2 year old baby girl in PAIN? No, you weren't, so don't even think you can tell me you know how I feel! "

And yes, I really said that to him. I was very stressed out and sick with worry and I didn't care how my words, and the tone I said them in hurt him.

But yesterday, an old acquaintance of mine, and now new long-distance true-blue "mommy friend" gave me advice via Facebook messages on a plan of action to take. I had Twinkletoes on laxatives, I had given her glycerin suppositories, and had just bought a bottle of mineral oil. All good approaches, but she needed that blockage out NOW before the laxatives would really be of help. So this friend of mine..suggested using an enema, and using is RIGHT AWAY!

Off to Kroger we went. When we got home, I explained it all to T, and she was nervous, but she was willing for me to give it a try. She was tired of being in pain. And it worked! She was thrilled, I was thrilled. And my mom, Grammy, came and picked her up after work and bought her a Barbie for being so brave.

I spent the morning, emailing back and forth with SB about what was going on and that I was going to do this enema. I told him how stressed I have been and how sorry I was that I had been taking a lot of it out on him. I know it wasn't fair to him. He was just trying to be encouraging with his words over the weekend, but I was worried sick and tired of being the one traumatizing our baby, and I felt like a HORRIBLE MOTHER for not being able to know how to help her without casing her so much pain.

I got an email in response and here is a little tidbit:

Babe, you are not a failure. YOU ARE A GREAT MOTHER!!

I really do hope you have a good day, you deserve it. Once we are caught up again I would like you to take a day and go pamper yourself with a massage and whatever else you want to do to relax. I mean it, I really think you could use some me time for yourself.

He most certainly is right about THAT..and I am going to take him up on it. I haven't had a massage in years. I haven't taken a lot of "me" time..I mean what mother does, really? And so, once we get our finances back into some sort of order, I will be taking a "Jen Day" and will probably even see if a friend would like to tag along. Massage, lunch, shopping..something like that. I need to recharge, and this sounds just about right! And..I even told SB last night that this could be my birthday present from him to me. And what a great birthday present it will be!!

Well, At Least We're Not Homeless

I really dislike money. It taunts me. I swear to you it does. My husband has a decent paying job, decent enough for us to be able for me to stay home. But that does not mean that we have excess amounts of it. I don't get my nails done, I don't go tanning, I don't go shopping, we don't go on vacations or go on outings that cost more than a few dollars. Would I like for us to be able to do those things, sure I would! But we just can not afford them. We made the decision for me to stay home with our children when Punk was born. I didn't go to college, I had a decent enough job, but after looking into childcare while I was pregnant, and comparing it to my paycheck. I would have walked away at the end of the week with under $100 in my pocket. We made the decision that less than $400/month would not be enough of a help for our family to have me away from home and have our child and potentially future children spend 10 hours /day with someone who was not a family member. (At that time I had almost an hour commute.)

So, I became a stay-at-home mom. It started out great! When Punk was a baby I spent our days playing peek-a-boo on the living room floor, endless hours gazing into his eyes, and recording every new milestone in his baby book. After the initial adjustment to my life at home with this little person, I started to feel like I wasn't "pulling my share" of the work in our family. I started taking care of our home like it was a paying job (laundry not included in this, I still suck at laundry!), and I took up taking care of our bills.

Our bills are the thorn in my side. I absolutely hate doing them. I hate trying to figure out where our money needs to go, and all of that crap. I am not a "math person" to begin with so it's always been a challenge for me. My husband, on the other hand, is great at it, but for some reason leaves it all up to me. I do not want this job. Occasionally, he'll say, "Don't worry about the bills anymore, I'll take care of them." I'll hand him the bill binder that I put together, think he's finally ridding me of this horrid chore, only to find out that 2 weeks later he has yet to crack it open and I have to scramble to catch everything up.

But this is not the point of this post. I'm just ranting a bit. It seems like with money, we have our ups and down. We'll be going along just fine, everything paid up, a little extra for fun things, and then BOOM! We'll get hit with some big bill and we're stuck playing catch up. That's been us for the last 2 or 3 weeks. I hate catch up. It stresses us both out, and neither of us handle stress well. The idea of a savings account is a joke for us. We just don't have enough coming in to have that kind of safety net..yet. Bad, I know, but I don't think our situation is rare in this country.

So..we've been stressed out. We've been juggling bills. I've been having yard sales so we have a bit extra to pull us through this difficult time. Just one or two more weeks and it should be caught up, but that seems like an eternity to wait. Exhibit A being our phone/internet bill. It was due Friday. There's just not enough to cover it if we want to eat. So it'll probably have to be shut off until THIS Friday when SB's paycheck hits our bank account. Sucks, but there's just not much we can do about it. Feed our children, or be able to get online..hmm..that's a no brainer. We're not poor. We're just struggling. We'll be okay. We just have to get through this tough time.

I've cut us back a ton. We cut back our immense satellite package to a basic one. Funny thing about that is we only lost 4 channels that we actually watch. I'm looking into completely doing away with our home phone service and getting us a Magic Jack. Aldi's has become my favorite place to shop..although, I can't bring myself to buy their meat. I only turn on our central air on the days that the humidity is so bad it's suffocating. And I am regularly using coupons.

We believe that within the next 30-60 days we are going to have a major change (for the good) in the amount of money that is coming into our household, but that is not something I can give the specifics on publicly at this time..but when I can, I can not wait to share it with you all! But until then. I am hoping I don't go prematurely gray. I am hoping my husband doesn't have a stress-induced panic attack. And throughout it all, we're trying our darndest to keep our kids from realizing anything is amiss.

With 3 young children, and at the point we are at in our lives, I know that what we are going through is fairly common. It's just not any fun. And until things turn around, we'll just keep hanging in there. Holding on to our abundance of love. And praying so hard that things get better sooner rather than later.

Poop

What a fun weekend! I hope you all had a fun one too.

There was one part the weekend that was not so great. Twinkletoes' poop.

This poor child has constipation issues. And she is scared of the "poop that hurts" so she holds it in. That's what happened this weekend. Saturday she was practically lethargic the whole day. I gave her a child laxative in the morning to help, but all that did was let the poop that was already in her intestines to be smeared out around the blockage. After seeing her cry in pain. Take a nap to forget about the pain, and then proceed to spend the rest of the afternoon in the house on the couch while everyone else was outside laughing and playing. I had had enough. My poor little girl's fun weekend away from home was being ruined by poop! This was NOT going to happen ANYMORE!

So I did what I did not want to do. I did what she did not want me to make her do. I made her sit on the potty and scream through the pain until the poop came out. I felt like I was coaching her through childbirth. And what did eventually come out was SO HUGE that it CLOGGED UP THE TOILET!! I had to PLUNGE a 3 year old's poop!! Not cool!!

So now I am determined for this to never happen again. She has suffered with this issue long enough. I will no longer allow her to hold her poop in for days just to have this continue to happen.

Every morning, I vow to make her sit on the potty and get her poop out. She hates it. I hate having to make her do it. But, it's worth it for her not to have to continue to go through what she went through Saturday afternoon.

Have any of you had similar problems with their own child. Is there another way to help her through this fear of going poop? She has plenty of fiber in her diet. She just is scared to poop. And holds it in until it becomes a major blockage. Help a momma out, would ya??

The Doctor Visit

We went to see our family doctor today about Twinkletoe's episodes where she stops breathing and zones out. He said it could be a form of seizure. Or it could be related to her fall.

She is being sent to a pediatric neurologist for an EEG and MRI.

I am trying to stay calm and not get to worried, but a pediatric neurologist, just sounds plain scary to me.

Please say prayers that everything is in working order and these test turn out to just be a precaution and will not lead to anything.

I am praying hard for my sweet baby girl.

What A Week!

Well, a day later than I had planned..but I'm back! I will try to make this post not go on and on, but that may be hard considering how much I have to share!

Last week was TREMENDOUSLY busy! Let me tell you all about it!

Monday: SB and I attending the calling ours of my dear friend's husband. He died too soon, and too unexpectedly. He was a 35 year old father of 2 young children ages 5 and 3. He had a massive heart attack brought on by an undiagnosed condition that he was born with. My friend and her children (along with the rest of his family and friends) are completely devastated by this loss. I pray for them daily. They need peace, understanding of why this happened, and comfort as they approach each new day on a journey to a new "normal". Please send prayers and good thoughts their way.

Tuesday: SB and I attended his funeral in the morning. SB called his son (my stepson!) to wish him a Happy 22nd Birthday! That evening Punk had a t-ball game. My dad and aunt who live 2 hours north of us, met us at the game to kick off the beginning of their 3 day visit to celebrate my dad's birthday. We then went back to our house where my mom and brother met us, and we cooked out and had a bonfire. It was a very happy and joyous end to a very sad day. My mom and aunt took the kids back to my mom's house for a sleepover and my dad, SB and I sat out by the fire until almost midnight sharing stories and catching up since we hadn't seen my dad since February.

Wednesday: We woke up around 6am and enjoyed warm coffee on the breezeway while waiting for my brother to meet us at 7am. This day was also my dad's 55th birthday! We then headed off for Dublin to attend the Double Skins Game at Muirfield Golf Course as part of the practice round for the Memorial Tournament. This was our gift to my dad. We stopped and had breakfast at a Cracker Barrel on the way. We had hoped for a hot, sunny day. Instead it barely reached 60 degrees and poured down rain on us the entire time!! But we did get to see Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus (along with many other PGA pros) up close and even got ourselves filmed on national television during the skins game! Luckily we had recorded it on our DVR and were able to watch it and see ourselves and laugh! SB called his daughter (my stepdaughter) to wish her a Happy 8th Birthday! We ended the day with a cookout at my mom's house, and stayed there until 1am drinking wine and enjoying good family time!

Thursday: The guys all went golfing. Us girls and the kids stayed at my mom's house and rested up from our busy day the day before. My mom wasn't feeling the best, and my aunt was exhausted from helping her with the kids the day before. I made my "famous" Garlic White Lasagna and everyone enjoyed it for dinner that evening. Twinkletoes had her dance rehearsal that evening and after we made it back to my mom's house, my mom, dad, aunt, SB and I all played Scrabble until almost 11pm when SB and I decided it was time for dad and us to take the kids back home since SB and my mom had to work the next day.

Friday: SB was at work before I was awake, but then Dad and I spent quiet time sitting on the breezeway, drinking coffee and chatting while we waited for my aunt to come and pick him up so they could head back to their houses. It was sad to see them go, but our visit was wonderful and we gave my dad a fantastic birthday. I spent the rest of the day working on my mom's birthday gift! We went to bed early that night trying to get some rest!

Saturday: We drove and hour north to pick up SB's mom so she could attend Twinkletoe's dance recital that evening. I called my mom to wish her a HAPPY BIRTHDAY since it was her 55th bday! We went to T's recital at 7 and got home around 10. She danced beautifully and was thrilled with the miniature rose bush her dad and I got for her and the tulips my mom got for her. Since this was her first time doing something like this she had NO IDEA that she would be getting flowers! The smile on her face was brighter than the sun.

Sunday: SB drove the hour to take his mom back home and I stayed home with the kids to make up the food for my mom's birthday celebration at our house. My mom and brother came over in the afternoon and we had artichoke dip as a snack. We broke out the beer and champagne and watched one of the home videos that I copied for my mom (which she said was the best present she had EVER received) and then spent the rest of the day outside playing Mexican Horseshoes (a game sorta like Cornhole, but 1000x better!) We then grilled shrimp skewers and had those over salad w/ garlic bread for dinner. Then we sat by the bonfire and chatted until it got to be almost dark and my mom headed home. Twinkletoes gave us a scare at bedtime. She stopped breathing for a minute or so. We almost had to call 911. We are starting to wonder if her going unconscious awhile back after her fall, was not due to the fall. My husband had a form of epilepsy as a child so we are going to have her checked out to see if she has been having seizures. Please say a little prayer for her.

So THAT was my week last week! Obviously the busiest of the year, thus far. Hopefully the busiest one we'll have for a long while. I had to spend the day recovering yesterday. I sat on the breezeway reading and just letting the kids run wild in the yard. They all even napped in the afternoon, and Punk NEVER naps!

It feels GOOD to be back to normal again!!

I Apologize

Just wanted to put out a little apology to my readers. I am sorry I've been MIA. Starting next week I will definitely be around more.

Memorial week was busy busy, as I am sure everyone else's was. And I thought I would be back after that.

I was wrong.

One of my dearest friend's husband died suddenly at age 35, leaving behind my friend and their 2 young children.

Needless to say, I had no desire to blog, nor time to do so either.

On top of that, this week, we've had family in town and will still have family around through the weekend.

So I will be back Monday. Please say prayers for my dear friend and her children.

Oh..and go to Mrs. M's awesome, fabulous blog today to see her featured blogger..ME!! Interview and all! :)

Rats!

Oh how I hate to write this. I just want to put out a notice that I have no problem AT ALL helping companies get the word out about their websites/products. But I need you to ask me first! My email link is right on the sidebar! Just shoot me an email so I can review your site/product and if I find it to be something that my readers would be interested in hearing about then we can talk about how best to get the word out. Be it a post like this one, or an advertisement on one of my sidebars. I will, however, not allow comments to be left on my posts with links to sites. They will be immediately deleted as soon as I see they have been posted. Thank you.


OKAY! Now that I got THAT off of my chest..let me tell you my sad story for today. I had a moment of "bad mommy" syndrome this morning. I was busy filling up the kids' juice cups when Punk came into the kitchen all teary-eyed and said. "I'm still really scared about what you said about those rats."

At first my mind went blank, "Huh? Rats? What is he talking about??" But then I remembered. I have been constantly getting on the kids to stop leaving crumb trails all over the family room carpet. I am constantly picking up sticky crumbs of Pop Tarts, or tramping on Cheerios that then get ground into the carpet. I had had enough of the the kids making such messes. And never getting it through their thick little skulls that they needed to be cleaning this stuff up or better yet, not being so darn messy to begin with!!

So yesterday, in a moment of "I've had enough!!" I said, "You guys, if you keep leaving messes like this all over the floor, rats will get in our house!" Then I laughed and said "Just pick it up!"

I seriously thought they knew I was joking. Apparently not.

Poor Punk was freaked out about it and once I told him that I had been joking and thought he KNEW that I had been joking, he just started crying and said "I didn't know, and I was SO SCARED in there this morning!!"

Oy. What a fantastic way to start the day.

Helping Feed The Hungry

Teaching kids about people less fortunate than them is an important task that we as mothers must do. It teaches empathy, understanding and tolerance, not to mention responsibility!!

I know that I don't do this enough. We are a very typical middle-class family. My husband has a job where he makes enough money for me to stay home, but not enough money for us to provide a lot of luxuries. And to be honest, that is perfectly OKAY by me. To be completely honest, even if we did have lots and lots of money, my children still wouldn't get all of the stuff they think they need. I want them to grow up knowing the value of saving for items they want. I want them to understand that the money that their Daddy makes at work goes towards paying for our home, food, electric, water...nothing is free. And gifts are saved for special occasions. Very rarely do they get "treats" while out at the store. It's just a luxury that they don't need.

But on the other hand, when they do get these things, I want them to understand to be grateful that we are able to afford these things. Many families out there can't. Many families out there can't even afford housing or food.

This past winter a local shelter opened up. Our church bulletin put out a list of needs for this shelter. Number one, blankets. We had recently gotten a box of my mother in law's old blankets (why she thought we needed them, I couldn't tell ya) but I saw this as a perfect opportunity for the kids to learn about giving to others. So we spent an afternoon washing them up and putting them into a box for the woman who ran the shelter to pick up. I explained to the kids what we were doing and they seemed to get it.

But that was months ago, and I haven't done anything since to help people in our community. I really should try to do something weekly with the kids to give them more of an understanding. Yesterday, an opportunity arose for another learning experience with the kids, and I jumped on it! Of all things, the USPS is having a food drive called "Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive" where tomorrow, May 9th, you can put non-perishable food items in your mailbox for your mailman to pick up and deliver to local food pantries. Isn't this awesome!! And it's so EASY! No running out to deliver the items. I can spend time with the kids bagging up cans of soup, tuna, spaghetti sauce; things we have in our cupboards that we can afford to replace so that we can be responsible citizens for helping others in our community who can not afford even simple grocery store items.

The kids are very excited about the idea of putting the food in the mailbox. But they also are showing a huge amount of concern about it. I explained that the food goes to families that can't afford groceries. That there are many kids out there who have to go to bed hungry at night. This started an onslaught of questions:

"But if their bellies are growling because they're so hungry, I bet those kids can't sleep very well. Right, Mommy?" -Punk, 5

That's right baby, that's why it's so important that we take this opportunity to help these families.

"If we give all of our food to the mailman, then will we have to go to bed hungry?" -Twinkletoes, 3

No, we are helping them because we have enough money to buy more food for ourselves. You will not go hungry, and neither will the kids whose families we will be helping.

So, I highly encourage you to take some time with your kids today to pack up a bag of food, and talk about the responsibility we have in helping others. The way the economy is right now, who knows which one of us may be the family needing such food drives in the future, and I would hope that as our children grow they continue to give to those less fortunate, fulfilling the responsibility of a concerned citizen of our great country!

I've Been Stereotyped

This weekend, after an awesome day at the ballpark watching Punk take part in his first Opening Day ceremonies of our town's baseball association and his first t-ball game, I was excited to come home and relax. One of our neighbors came over, someone with whom I believed I was becoming good friends with, and we decided to have a cookout together. We combined our food and my husband did the grilling while we waited for her husband to come over and join us.

We had a few drinks and the night was progressing nicely. Lots of stories being shared, lots of laughs, and lots of good food!

Not long after putting our kids to bed, my neighbor's husband went home as well because he had to get up early to go to work, but left us his cell phone number with the warning, "Call me if my wife pisses anyone off, she has been known to do it before, so in case you need me, just call!"

We laughed it off. She's always been so fun and nice!

But. Then. Something. Changed.

She started attacking me, verbally that is. I don't know what happened, but one minute we were talking about kids, and the next, she turns to me and starts going on and on and on about what a spoiled housewife I am. How I take advantage of my husband. How I just live the life of luxury and don't know what it's like to put in an honest day of work.

"I've HEARD you sit there and say, 'Oh I'll just let SB do that', or 'SB can take care of the kids for a little bit, I'm taking a break.' Let me tell you something, (Insert a very explicit name that starts with a 'C'), this man (pointing at my husband) works all day, this man is the only one taking care of this family, and you have the NERVE to sit in your chair in the evenings and let him deal with the kids!? How did you become so spoiled? YOU DO NOTHING and yet you expect YOUR HUSBAND TO HELP YOU?"

Yep, she said all that...and then some.

I am not a confrontational person so I just sat there.

Bless SB's heart, he jumped in and said "No, Jen works really hard, we have a system that works for us and I actually want to help her in the evenings, she needs that break."

Well, that just was like pouring fuel on a fire. She continued to go on and on about how he shouldn't be helping me out. I am the one who "sits home all day and does nothing".

I finally managed to get her to go home. I then walked straight to the bathroom, locked myself in, and cried. SB heard me and made me come out. I informed him that I didn't know if I was over-reacting, because after all she had had too much to drink, but I was NEVER talking to her again. I would be polite if I saw her outside, but she was NEVER to come to our house again.

SB then reminded me, that yes, she had had too much to drink, but that was not the first time she had said that kind of stuff to me. That was just the first time she had been HATEFUL about it.

That got me thinking about the snarky comments she's made in the past few weeks. Like the day she came home from work and I was outside with a baby on one hip, and a bag of trash in the other hand taking it to the outside trashcan. She yelled across the street, "Must be nice to live the life of luxury." I laughed. I thought she was joking because, taking out the trash, while dragging an 18 month old around is definitely NOT my idea of luxury, but in hindsight, she wasn't kidding. She was referring to the fact that I was at home all day.

Then I thought about the exchange she and I had had earlier in the day, before our cookout. She had gone inside my house for something and then let me know that our big screen TV was left on even though we were all outside.

I responded "Oh, I TOLD Punk to turn that off when he came out to ride his bike, the little booger didn't listen!"

She replied, "Its YOUR obligation to take care of this stuff, you're the one who's always here. You shouldn't expect your kids to do things for you."

Hmm. So, I guess my kids should have no responsibility. Just me. Since all I do is sit around.

After crying myself to exhaustion on Saturday night. Waking up on Sunday morning and feeling very very down. Constantly tearing up all day Sunday. I've finally came to realize, that there is nothing wrong with me. There is nothing wrong with my life. I am not lazy. I do not overly rely on my husband. He does things for me and the kids after working all day because he wants to. Because he knows that I, too, have worked all day!

There is however something very wrong with my neighbor. She apparently is jealous of me. That's right, I said it. I still have little kids. Her kid is all grown up and has flown the nest. I get to be home with my kids. She worked while her kid was growing up and is still working. I have a husband who is willing to help me. She apparently doesn't.

Does this mean I'm spoiled? Maybe.

But does this mean I am not worthy of respect? No.

Does this mean I am not worthy of being treated kindly? No.

Does this mean that I am a lazy housewife who does nothing but lay around and leaves all of the actual work for my husband to do? ABSOLUTELY NOT!

I work hard. I love my family. And screw HER. I'm done. I have NO intentions of ever having her over to my house again.

My perfect, dream neighborhood just got a little stinky..but oh well. At least now I won't ever have to worry about being attacked in my own home like that again!

Punk's BIG Day

Today is the day. The day I have been dreading, yet looking forward to since the day that my little man was born. It seems like just a couple of weeks ago, my mom and I were talking about how quickly the 5 years would fly until Punk went to school. At that time he was probably only 6 weeks old. Now those 5 years are up. And as I type this the kids are getting dressed so that I can take Punk to his Kindergarten registration.

Last week he had his immunizations so that his record would be up to date for today. I've made his dentist and doctor appointments for his checkups that I'll have to turn in before the first day of school. I've gone over and over these questions, "How do you spell your name?" "What is your address?" "What is your phone number?" How high can you count?" Ect. Ect.

I honestly have no idea what they'll actually be asking him, and the fact that they will take him into another room away from me to do the evaluation, I'll probably never know, because my son, is a natural blonde, and it shows! (He'll forget the minute we're back in the car.) So it will probably all be a mystery. Well until Twinkletoes goes through this in 2 years. That girl will give me every detail down to what the teacher was wearing.

But for now, today is Punk's big day. I am a nervous wreck. He on the other hand, is all, "Whatever, lets get this over with." And a little tiny piece of my heart has broken. My baby boy is all grown up. My FIRST baby, my LAST baby boy, is getting prepared to leave our nest. I'm so proud. I'm so sad. But today is a day I will never forget. This is the beginning of a new life for Punk, and I can't wait to see him fly!