It's been a week of birthdays...

Jim kicked it off on Monday

Grandma and Dad took the Saturday spot


And my little Bill has Sunday covered


Happy Birthday! Love you all.

Happy Birthday yaya

I remember feeling unprepared when you were born. I even had an epiphany when you were about 2 weeks old..."it's like babysitting, but the parents are never coming home!" Yeah, that was a little scary. But I think we've got our groove on with this mother-daughter thing, I'd even venture to say it's fun. Hope you feel the same. Love you baby.

Hello Four

Three was fun. I have a feeling four will be even better. I'm already digging the fashion sense, tucked in stripes and all. We are lucky to have you♥♥♥♥

12 years!!!

Wow, can't believe it! One more year until teenager-dom. So until then, rock on with your 12 year old self!

Happy Belated Birthday Baby

Instead of celebrating your birthday on Friday Sept 21st, we were suffering from a stomach virus. First you and then Ruby and then Mom and Dad. (Olivia didn't succumb until Sunday) I'm just glad we got in a couple of fun things before the plague hit us. Wednesday night we had dinner at T-Rex Cafe.


I loved your expression when they brought your sundae and sang Happy Birthday to you.














Since you don't have school on Fridays, I brought cupcakes to your school Thursday afternoon.



Poor baby. You were so not into it...you didn't even touch your cupcake. About 5 minutes later you told me you didn't feel good and that you wanted to go home. I'm so sorry it turned out that way but next weekend we'll make it up to you and you will get your presents and cake and pinata and Mason will spend the night, okay?

Happy Birthday Ruby

We've got some love and money too..
gonna give them all to you.

**Big shout out to Olivia for putting this together. "They're great with technology" is on my top ten list of the benefits to having kids. Though I promise you Olivia, when I am 80 years old I won't call you to come over and change the channel on the remote that I can't figure out. **fingers crossed**

To my favorite 11 year old in the whole wide world

Your boyness perplexes me
Your kindness amazes me
Your energy dizzies me
Your sense of humor makes me smile

Don't ever change
Stay just the way you are

Happy Birthday-I love you

Happy "Friday The 13th" Birthday To Me

I think it being my birthday and all gives me an immunity to any bad luck today. Don't cha think?
Since I post everyone else's baby pic here's mine.












I used to think Ruby and Billy got their big heads from Jim. Maybe not. I think I might have to "shoulder" some of the blame. To quote Mike Meyers, "Look at the size of that boy's head! That's a huge noggin! That's a virtual planetoid. Has it's own weather system." Big head or not (and big ears), I was still pretty cute.

Anyway back to my birthday. I turn thirty-six today. I've got to say I liked turning thirty, I felt like I was finally a "grown-up". Thirty six? Not liking the sound of that. I'm on the downward slide to FORTY!

Oh well. A wise person once said, "I don't mind growing older, it's better than the alternative."

Do You Remember......the 21st of September?

**Four years old today**

Happy Birthday Baby

Go Mommy, It's Yer Berthday

Happy Birthday to the hardest working person I know. I hope you take it easy today. Have some wine, eat some great food and just relax.
And know that the one thing that doesn't take any work at all is the love of your family.














Kirk! Please! Stop the madness! Your sweet face is so much sweeter without the silly looks!

1994

Twelve years ago...........

Beck's "Loser", Sheryl Crow's "All I Wanna Do" and Counting Crows' "Mr. Jones" were on the radio.

Kurt Cobain killed himself (or Courtney did it, depends on who you ask.)

Tonya Harding had her goons whack Nancy Kerrigan in the knee. I didn't like either of them and Oksana Baiul ended up winning the gold.

O.J. Simpson killed Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman.

The Buffalo Bills lost the Super Bowl.....again.

There was no World Series because the spoiled players were on strike.

*sigh* Bill Clinton was El Presidente*sigh*

Pulp Fiction, The Shawshank Redemption and Forrest Gump were in theaters.

ER and Friends made their network debuts

Nelson Mandela was elected President of South Africa

And the most important event of 1994 in my world...............Olivia was born.




Fast forward to 2006 and I'm so proud to say Olivia is everything I could have dreamed a Daughter to be. She is a funny, smart, responsible, trustworthy, pretty, caring, independent person and I love being around her. (She also shares my love for Led Zepplin, how lucky am I?)


Happy Birthday Olivia and I love you!

Ruby's Birth Story

Ruby's birthday is tomorrow and what a perfect opportunity to share her birth story. Let me get right down to it and bring out my drama queen: I almost died.
It started out relatively normal. I was laying on the couch watching tv when my water broke. I called my doctor's office and let them know and before we headed off to the hospital I had Jim run out and get some food. Having done this before I knew that if I didn't eat now it could be a long time before my next meal.
When we got to the hospital the nurse did an examination to check for amniotic fluid. When the ph strip didn't turn the right color they told me that my water had not broke and that I could go home. I refused to accept that. With all three of my previous babies the first thing to happen was the water breaking. I knew that my water had broke and I was not going to be told otherwise. They finally did a sonogram to measure the amniotic fluid. Yeah like I told them, my water had broke.
By the time I got settled in my room it was later in the evening. The nurse told me they could go ahead and give me petocin and we could have this baby tonight. I asked if my doctor would be here and I was told that it was the nurse midwife who was on call from my doctor's practice. Knowing the complications of my previous births I told the nurse I would feel more comfortable waiting for Dr. Reynolds to be here. Later on I would realize this was of the best decisions I ever made.
The next morning the petocin was started and soon after that the contractions came on fast and furious. Before too long I was ready for the epidural and the anesthesiologist came in to stick me in the spine. I had an epidural with all three of my previous births and they were great. This time it didn't work. They tried and tried over and over again but they weren't getting it in the right spot. I was not happy, I didn't want natural childbirth! After a couple of hours of petocin strength contractions the assholes finally got it right, just in time for me to start pushing. This part went pretty easy and after a few pushes our little girl was born.
This is when things started going downhill and my memory is spotty. While the nurses were weighing Ruby and cleaning her up Dr. Reynolds was working on getting the placenta out. It was not coming out very easily and I was bleeding a lot. At some point the bleeding became excessive. The nurses handed the baby to Jim and there were a lot of people in the room. Dr. Reynolds was still working on the placenta and at this point I had lost so much blood I was going in and out of consciousness. Jim said it was like mass chaos had erupted and he felt helpless just watching. Dr. Reynolds called out for a blood transfusion and shortly after that I was wheeled away for an emergency hysterectomy. Jim said there was blood everywhere and a trail of blood coming off the bed as I was wheeled away. Even though I was mostly out of it I was still aware enough to know that things were not good. I told Dr. Reynolds to not let me die.
After the surgery I was taken to the recovery room. Jim came down to see me for a few minutes, it was so good to see his face and to see the person who went through this with me. We were both in a "What the hell just happened?" state. I sent him back upstairs to be with our baby. The hour I spent in recovery was on of the longest of my life. I couldn't wait to get back up to my room and to hold my new baby and be with my family.

All in all I lost 3 liters of blood (yep, that's more than half). I was also left with a nasty scar on my stomach. Since the surgery was an emergency there was no time to make a neat and pretty incision. I have a big scar that starts right under my belly button down about 5 inches. I've gotten used to it though, I consider it a life tattoo. A reminder of the difficult day my beautiful baby girl came into my world. Happy Birthday to my Ruby.












Our first picture together.
(I had a really good excuse for looking this bad.)

The Big 1-0....Happy Birthday Kirk!

After posting about muscle cars, global warming and silent birth, it's back to Mommy blogging. My son Kirk turns ten years old today. My rap loving, bling wearing, basketball playing son. These aren't the things I would of chosen for him to be into (except for the basketball.) Personally I like the California skater boy look myself. But it's not my choice, is it? I learned that one a long time ago with Olivia. When she was a toddler I loved to do her hair in pigtails or barrettes. Then one day this two year old decided that wasn't her style and would pull the pigtails/barrettes out as fast as I could get them in. My dreams of a living, breathing doll were squashed. Bummer.
Okay now, back to Kirk. He's got a great sense of humor, is a popular kid at school, the girls love him and he has lots of friends. He doesn't get the best grades at school even though he tries very hard. He has learning disabilities and school is difficult for him. Everyone has their cross to bear, right?
As you watch your children get older their emerging personality, their likes and dislikes, their strengths and weaknesses become more and more apparent. You get to see glimpses of the adults that they may become. And really, how much input do we have? Ah yes, the nature vs. nurture debate. I think it's a mixture of both. Take a predetermined personality and throw in your parenting style and Voila- a unique person.
How many of us, when we were holding our newborn babies, had visions of what this little human was to become. Maybe a leader, an artist, an athelete, a Nobel winning scientist? Does it always happen this way? No. Is that a bad thing? I don't think so. As parent's we guide and discipline and we teach our children the things that we feel are important. Even then they don't turn out exactly like we expected and why should they? They have their own spirit. Having expectations is good for a child, when it's taken to an extreme it can become painful for the child and the parent.
My hopes for Kirk? To be a kind person, to defend the weak, to treat people with respect, work hard, to know himself and to be happy with his choices. So far so good. And if he grows up to be a basketball star? That would be cool.