Fourteen

There were several times today, on my first baby's 14th birthday, that I almost burst open with the pride of being her mother. She knows how to be a friend...and when she falters, she's quick to listen to advice. She's almost freakishly mature for her age. She's almost freakishly mature for MY age.

The stories that really define my girl these days are generally not stories I can tell. Not for me to tell the stories about helping one friend, or soothing another's ruffled feathers, or chiding a third when she seems to be going astray.

So instead, let me tell you about this one day, the day after the day on which Baroy and I helped register her for high school, watched as she picked up her schedule and her ID and her books, and took much longer to get over the fact that she didn't make the soccer team than she did.

Today, Em's 14th birthday, started with her brother jumping atop her on her bed to give her his present...and then continued with him hiding under her covers while I sang Happy Birthday, a song that unaccountably freaks him out, and always has.

It continued, then, with a mother-daughter lunch at Tony Roma's, our special place. After lunch, we wandered around for a short while, then decided the heat was just more than we could bear, so headed home to await her girlfriends, who were finishing up their various color guard/cheerleading practices.

The original plan was for me to take the five girls to a local botanical gardens, where they were planning to a kind of photo shoot. (Em has a camera that's more expensive than the last three I've used put together...but she saved up for and bought it herself, and she uses it, so I have no complaints.) Mr. Sun had other plans, however--plans that included temperatures of over 100 at 5:30 this evening. So, instead, they asked to be chauffeured to the mall. Em wasn't too upset about it; she's been wanting to go to the gardens, sure, but she also had a Forever 21 gift card burning a hole in her pocket, so it was a perfect alternative.

Driving five 14-year-old girls around is something else. And that's all I'll say about that. At least until the ringing in my ears subsides.

Baroy picked them up a few hours later, dropped off the other girls, and returned Em home for her requested family dinner of chicken fricassee. Almost as soon as we finished chewing, the neighborhood kids began to arrive for the annual destroying of my backyard, also known as celebrating Em's birthday in their own traditional, if idiosyncratic, manner. (It involves me having both a cake for them to eat, and a cake for them to smash into Em's face...and then letting it all devolve into a complete free-for-all involving more cake, silly string, and the backyard hose. It's a mess, but it's worth it to watch them scream and giggle and enjoy the hell out of themselves once a year. Of course, I can say that, because it was Baroy who cleaned up after them.)

And now, Em and two of those friends are in a tent in the water-soaked backyard, having a sleepover. Except not so much on the sleep, at least not yet. But, you know, the night's still...well, not so much young as middle-aged.

Lest you think the festivities are coming to an end, there's a trip to the water park tomorrow, to celebrate a few other friends' August birthdays as a group.


Because, really. No matter how mature you may be, you're never too old for a smash cake and some water slides.

Happy birthday, Em. You make my heart sing. I love you.

Twelve Years Ago Tonight

Twelve years ago tonight, we had a barbeque, just me, Baroy, and my brother-in-law. Steve drove me nuts, watching my every move.

"Was that a contraction?" he'd ask every time any one of my facial muscles twitched.

It was my due date, but I wasn't there yet. I just knew it.

"No," I said, time and time again. Or, "Just a small Braxton-Hicks."

At some point, though, there was a sea change. I knew that if I told Steve, we'd never get him to go home, and I needed him to go home. I needed to get some sleep. It was almost time.

Instead, I told him that the Braxton-Hicks contractions were coming pretty regularly, and would he do me a favor and time them for me? By the time they were coming every ten minutes or so, I told him that, yeah, he should probably keep the next day clear, just in case. I also told him he needed to go home. Now.

In fact, it was pretty much right now--11:15 on August the 24th--as I'm typing these words tonight. Once we'd finally shoved Steve out the door with orders to get some sleep and keep his phone by his bed, Baroy and I got into bed ourselves, gearing up for a rest that wasn't to be. Within a couple of hours, it would be August 25, 1997, and I'd be up and on the couch, contractions coming every five to seven minutes, beginning the work of becoming a mother for the very first time.

But today--or, rather, 12 years ago today--it was not quite time yet. And that was good, because I wasn't ready. Almost, but not quite. And then, suddenly, without knowing it, I was.

Happy 12th birthday, Em. I love you. And I love what you made of me.

(A photo of a photo of me and Baroy at a picnic, one week earlier...
I loved my belly.)

Birth

My birthdays and N's have been and always will be intertwined for me, being that it was on my 37th birthday (January 24) that I began my prelabor with N, who was ultimately born on the 26th.

Today he is 8. That just floors me.

My BIL took us out last night for dinner to celebrate N's special day*; we went to a restaurant (diner, actually) of N's choosing. While there, Em started reminiscing about what was going on eight years earlier; she was 3-and-a-half, and clearly remembers a lot of the next few days, though mostly from that preschooler's perspective of all the presents she got, and how Uncle stayed with her while Baroy was with me in the hospital, and how Uncle introduced her to too-old-for-her cartoons on Nickelodeon, and how my friend Cara put French braids in her hair, which I could never do. Stuff like that.

Baroy and I added our own recollections; mine involved Ambre walking me around the Glendale Galleria on my birthday and feeding me spicy Thai food to try to get things going, and my friend Cara, who was to be my doula, being in the middle of an IEP for a child at her school (yes, I do recognize the irony) and begging me to hold on until she could get out of her meeting and drive the three hours to my house to help me through. I then moved on to memories of walking circuits around my house, trying to get through the contractions in the bathtub, the hellish ride to the hospital in full-on labor, oxygen tubes up my nose and an ungentle anesthesiologist.

Baroy's memory? The fact that my young, cute female obstetrician wore a thong under her scrubs, a fact that became glaringly obvious when she bent over to examine me. I can't say as I blame him; it's been an image burned into my memory ever since, even though I was on the other end. What freaks me out the most is that I can't remember her name, which is especially odd since I knew her for a while, and saw her a lot both as a patient and because I worked in PR at the university where she practiced, and we were on a first-name basis. When I say my memory is going, I do not kid.

And then there is today, the day he finally came out, an emergency c-section after a failed vbac, a couple of hours in the NICU due to some really crummy apgars, and then the World's Easiest Infant, who nursed like a champ, slept through the night at four months of age (and by through the night I mean falling asleep as soon as his body hit a mattress, and staying that way for seven-plus hours), and quietly smiled his way through his first 18 months. At which point something went off like a switch inside him, and he found his personality and became the amazing, quirky, challenging, adorable, absolutely unique kid he is today, the child who defines auditory sensory defensiveness--hiding under the table with his hands clamped over his ears when the waiters at the restaurant sang "Happy Birthday" while serving the cake my BIL had brought--but who later gave the same waiters a thumbs-up, saying, "Peace out, dude!" and leaving them all laughing and shaking their heads as he swaggered out the door.

That's my boy. That's my eight-year-old boy.

*FYI, in case you think I'm wholely selfless and have let my birthday be absorbed entirely by my son, I was duly feted on Saturday, the actual day of my birth, when we went out to dinner with a group of friends from our synagogue while the oldest child, who is 15, babysat the youngers, who are 7 and up; there were drinks and food even an awesomely cool present for me (mine's the Tie-dye-tini), which I totally wasn't expecting. It was much fun.

Why I Love My Daughter

It is the eve of her 11th birthday, and it is hellaciously hot. Right now, she is sitting in our living room--our only air-conditioned downstairs room--playing Clue with three of her friends, two of whom we hung out with during our weekly Music-in-the-Park Sunday, the third of whom we ran into there with her family. Because we don't do birthday parties for her any more--long story, not now, suffice to say it was/is her choice--we were able to bring all three girls home with us for an impromptu slumber party.

She has come in to me no fewer than three times since we got home to hug me, and thank me for doing this for her.

I've done nothing, mind you, other than say "sure, they can come over." I've done literally nothing. No invitations, no party games, no cake (though, hey, I did bring cupcakes to the park...though Em, at her request, baked and frosted them, so I probably shouldn't use them to brag about my Mother of the Year qualifications).

Tomorrow night, we'll have the neighborhood kids over for some ice-cream cake after an early family dinner at Tony Roma's. Em's been looking forward to this for weeks. I took her and her friend C to see a movie on Friday; I'll take her and her friend J to play laser tag for a while some time later this week. It's nothing; there are 'regular' weeks that are busier, or more fun. And yet.

And yet, here's what I can tell you about it all: If you ask her, Em will tell you that this was the best birthday ever. And she'll mean it.

God, I love that kid. And not just because she's easy to please. But because she's happy, period. She's a generally happy kid, and it takes very little to make her that way.

I have so much to learn from her.

(Happy birthday, baby.)

Now He Is Seven

I'm not really sure why I'm feeling so quiet on this, the occasion of my son's seventh birthday. We had a perfectly wonderful day--the Southern California rains stopped just long enough for us to have his golf-themed party outside (a true miracle, since it rained up until this morning and then started again within half an hour after the last guest left), everyone who was invited to the party (no, nobody from his class at school) showed up and seemed to have fun, and N was just...perfectly wonderful and perfectly normal. WeeyumWise's mom--who's been at every one of N's birthday parties, except, perhaps, for the first one (though maybe that one too; my memory is Not Good)--said it was the happiest she's ever seen him at a party, and the most comfortable.

And maybe that's why I'm so quiet. It's not that I'm at a loss for words regarding my favorite boy in the world, but that I talk so much about him so often, and today was just happy and comfortable and normal--the kind of day that doesn't really require talking and analyzing and obsessing.

My baby turned 7 today, and he had a party, and there were friends and games and presents and laughter and cake. It was perfectly wonderful.

[I made the cake and the cupcakes, and everything on them is edible. What you can't see is that the pretzel-and-fruit-rollup flags each have the number 7 written on them in frosting. It was no treasure-chest cake--nothing will ever beat that one--but it turned out really nicely, I thought.]

I Must Be Doing Something Right

Today is my birthday, number 44. (Does it make me seem charmingly neurotic or just flat-out insane when I say that having a numerical palindrome for an age makes me very, very happy?) Since N's birth two days after my 37th birthday, these days have become quiet ones, as we gear up for celebrating a little boy who begins looking forward to his special day on January 27th each year. This is fine by me.

And so, today, I've cleared the decks of heavy-lifting work (lots of routine tasks to catch up with, but no research and no writing of complete sentences for a potentially critical audience), and we'll bring dinner in. That's all I need.

Well, that and some presents. Or, rather, the cards that came with the presents.

Baroy's card to me was too cute--a copy of the Time magazine cover (even *I* can't bear to link to it yet again; the tooting of my own horn these days is almost deafening) with "I know I would be sick without you!" on the inside. Hysterical, and very sweet.

But the kids outdid themselves. Em (who recently learned how to use Powerpoint at school), put together a Powerpoint presentation for me, and then printed it out. Here are some excerpts:

What her son thinks about her

• "She's perfect"
• "She's great at everything"
• "She's wonderful when she puts me to bed"
• "She's good at work"
• "She's sweet"
• "She's good at taking Snug for walks"

and

What her daughter thinks of her

• "She's a great friend"
• "She's great to talk to"
• "She is great to go to when I'm feeling blue"
• "She's great to go to for advice"
• "She knows me and all my problems"

OK, so that second one makes it seem like poor Em is constantly on the edge of a nervous breakdown, but still...If that isn't the official Cutest Thing Ever, I don't know what is.

Oh, and to top it all off, one of my nephews called me this afternoon to wish me a happy birthday...and we talked! For a long time! This is an 11-year-old boy for whom chatting on the phone has always seemed like some sort of evil torture...and yet, today, he used complete sentences! Sometimes two in a row! It was truly awesome. Seriously. I love that kid to death, and to get a chance to chat with him after not having seen him for a good six months is a huge gift.

So, yeah. 44. A palindrome year filled with notes and conversations and kids I adore. I could do much worse.

Articles and Invitations

Invitations first, because I know Green is waiting with bated breath. (No, that's not a typo; baited breath, though often used, is wrong. Yes, yes I am a word geek. And proud of it.)

All was well in Party Planning Land; I'd decided to take the advice given here and just go with N's flow, and was feeling just fine about it. Until they went back to school on Wednesday. Because Wednesday afternoon, he came home and said, "I want to invite Luke to my party. He's funny."

So now we're in negotiations over who else from his class to invite. Because I'm not going to invite Luke and no other kid from the class--especially because I've never, not once, seen him and Luke even LOOK at each other, much less pal around, and also because if there is nobody else from the class here, who will Luke get to hang with? We'll see where this goes from here.

Funny thing is, as I was saying to Kristen the other day (a conversation during which we came to realize that my parents live near her, and hers live really, really near me--which is irrelevant but oh-so-cool): It hadn't occurred to me that one of the reasons he didn't want to invite the kids from his class might have been the simple fact that he hadn't seen any of them for two weeks when we had the initial invite conversation, and that the whole out-of-sight-out-of-mind thing, plus the feeling-shy-when-you-haven't-seen-someone-in-a-while thing (which he has in spades, being N) might be playing a part. I feel dumb now, actually.

As for the article: No, no word yet. I do appreciate the words of support, though I could tell you all the reasons why just being a good writer sometimes isn't enough. Oh, and to make things a little clearer...If you read my comments, you've probably realized that among the people I talked to for this piece were some of my friends (who are also some of my blog readers, obviously). It's true, and it's fine; they were perfect for it, and fabulously helpful. Not to mention that I got to interview them with a strong drink in my hand...and, OK, several in my belly, along with some truly delicious crab dip...on New Year's Eve. Yep; it's a hard-knock life for me.

[Since you guys asked for a scorecard: Paula and her hubby unfortunately didn't make it out of my first round of cuts; Ambre the Spotlight Hogger and her very interesting comments did, but are on a list of possible cuts that I gave to my editor, since the piece is still a bit long. Time will (hopefully soon) tell.]

Push or No?

I'm looking for advice here. But first, a little bit of background: I've talked so much about N's social issues--and about how much better things have been of late--that it's hard to find one post that summarizes them. Suffice it to say, he has social issues. He's had them for a long time. Also suffice it to say that those social issues are becoming squished into a smaller and smaller area of his life...an area with an epicenter that sits squarely over his school. Put more bluntly: He has many social problems at school, not so many outside of it.

More background: His birthday, last year, was an unqualified disaster...if only from my point of view...and it's taken me almost a full year to shake off the feelings it engendered in me.

So, on to the advice-needing. In order to avoid last year's birthday mistake, I resolved to begin planning (and inviting) EARLY this year. And so, today, I started talking party-planning with N. We came up with the idea of having a golf party here--OK, so it's actually an idea my friend Deb had a year ago, but I remembered it and brought it up and N thought it was great, so I'm taking credit--for which we will set up a little miniature golf course in the backyard, and I'll give all the kids plastic putters and golf balls as their goodie bag gifts, and they can play with/beat each other over the heads with them while they're at the party. Fun for all! And N is already planning the 'golf cake' I'm going to make for him...with PINK grass. (Since he was three or four, this kid has had it in his head that the only yummy cake icing is pink cake icing...and he's insisted I use it on every cake I make for him.)

Then we sat down to make up an invite list. First up, of course, was WeeyumWise, the Best Friend Since the Beginning of Time. Then, in quick succession, the names of all the kids in The Gang. And six kids from our block, five of whom are significantly older than N. Then silence. And so I prompt: What about your friends from Hebrew school? His face lights up. "I forgot! We have to invite Zach! And Lex!" Great. And who should we invite from school? My pen is poised to write, until he says: "Nobody. I don't want to invite nobody from school."

He won't budge. "I just don't want to," he says in reply to my repeated entreaties, to my suggestions of individual kids he seems to like. "Nope, not him. Not her either." Finally, I ask: Do you feel like you don't have any friends at school? He nods, then shakes his head a little and names a couple of kids who are his friends. But then adds, "But I don't want to invite them to my party. I just want these people on the list already."

And so my question: Do I overrule? Do I assume he won't remember this conversation a month from now, and send out invitations to his classmates anyway? Do I keep pushing him on a regular basis to rethink this decision? Or do I simply respect his opinion, and invite the 16 kids he DID put on his list, and leave it at that? Because that's a lot of kids, right? Even if about half of them are really Em's friends?

I know this is mostly about me. It's about me wanting him to have lots of friends, and thinking that his not wanting to have anyone from his class at his party means he's an outcast there. As if inviting them would change that if it were true. As if attending a birthday party is a sign of true friendship. I'm just being stupid. That list has seven or eight little boys and girls who N really enjoys spending time with. They are his friends. They are his real friends. That's good. That's a victory.

Truth is, when I got over feeling the gut-punch of hearing those words come from my sweet little boy as he sat on my lap planning his party...when I got over that, I had to admit that choosing not to invite the kids from his class--the kids he chooses not to play with on a daily basis in the school yard--was a pretty mature thing to do. It felt like something he meant, that he was sure about. It didn't feel like it was coming out of thin air, or out of some external pressure he was picking up on, like so much of what he says and does. And I guess I should respect that. Because he is asking me to. Because he is telling me what he wants.

Right? Wrong?