Friday, June 5, 2009, is a momentous day. 

On that day my son graduates from high school.  I tell you what (Texas saying), I’m gonna need a truck-load of tissues.

In fact, I can’t even blog about it without shedding tears.

My goal, as a mom, is to raise my children so that they venture into the world as somewhat sane,  well-adjusted, and happy people (aren’t those lyrics to an REM song?). 

Now that it’s ‘bottom of the 9th’, I want to take it all back.  I don’t want my baby going so far away where I’ll worry about him, even more than I do now.  I don’t want him to be hungry, get hurt or struggle for anything.  I don’t want to miss his daily soliloquies.  

Now that I’m face-to-face with the ‘end’ of parenthood, I don’t want him to leave at all.

This is my baby who was born to a teen-aged mom who had no clue how to keep him alive.  This is my son who I raised, not by myself, but with the help of a ‘village’ of friends.  This is my child who inspired me to go to college, and better my career, so he’d be proud of me.  This is my mischievous imp who caused trouble then flashed that ‘sunshine-grin’ which forced me to crumple him in my arms in forgiveness.  This is my boy who is so much like me that he knew (and knows) exactly which buttons to push that sent my temper to the moon. This is my kiddo that lovingly held his baby sisters, who may miss him even more than I.

My child, my baby, now an adult. 

This is a such a wonderful life event…why do I feel like a part of my has died?

Please pass the tissue(s)…

My 5-year-old has quite the sense of humor.  It’s crude humor, but still. 

Someone at preschool, probably a boy (I have a son, I KNOW they are born with this gross-comedy gene), told Eva to say ‘I want to…’ and then spell the word ’C-U-P’.  SO, she repeated it, ad nauseum, yesterday evening: 

“Hey Momma, I wanna CUP!”

“Momma,  I wanna See-UP!”

Poor girl didn’t comprehend what her mature boy-friend was trying to get her to do.

Tonight she came home and did it right. 

“Hey Momma, I wanna “SEE-YOU-PEE”"

Then she laughed so hard I got to ‘C-Her-P’.  I couldn’t help but laugh with her.  We both had hiccups afterwards for at least an hour. 

I’d love to play that joke at work, but then I’d get written up!!! 

No fair.

Tomorrow is my birthday! I’ll be turning 28, but plan to party like I’m 18 all over again! I realize that 28 is still young, but when you have had 3 babies in 2 years, old age creeps in on you, hard and fast! I’ve been feeling a little down about the whole thing… not about being a year older, but about feeling 20 years past my prime. The solution is simple; take one night to myself, where I can be Geri instead of Mommy, dress up, act wild, and enjoy myself.

Before I had children, I had a pretty exciting night life. My friends and I partied Thursday thru Sunday, hitting a different club each night. We’d wear short, short skirts and high, high heels…a far cry from the worn out jeans and sneakers that are my current uniform.

Back then, whenever I bought a new pair of shoes, I put them through “The Heel Test”. Wearing 4″ heels around the shoe store for 2 minutes, while you Ooo and Aahh about how sexy they make your legs look, is not a true measure of how practical these shoes are in real life. Just because you can walk the length of the store without snapping an ankle, does not mean that you can walk 6 blocks from the parking lot to the club, wait 20 minutes in line to get in, stand at the bar for another eternity, then dance the night away. My test was simple… I’d put the shoes on in my car, walk across the parking lot into my building, then up 3 flights of stairs to my apartment. If I could make it to the front door without crying, the shoes made the cut. If not, I would kindly slip them off, put them back in the box and return them to the store. I liked to be sexy, but nothing was worth losing a toe.

Life has changed since then, but nevertheless, the new shoes that I bought yesterday needed to undergo a test. I figured that if I could cook dinner, wash the dishes and bathe the kids, all while wearing 4″ heels, I could do anything! And so it began…. 5 minutes into “The Test”, my toes went numb, a few minutes later my ankle buckled, and I got shooting pains in my arches, as I squatted at the edge of the tub.

This is not good. The shoes failed, and miserably! Now I’m faced with a dilemma. I can either return them, in exchange for a pair of blah black ballet flats, or suck it up, put on my brave face and wear the sexy shoes, even though they make my eyes water with every step.

I’m going for the latter! I’m going to live it up, and pay for it later. It’s only one day… my birthday!

It’s dinner time and time for Silvia’s medicine. She’s on antibiotics for (yet another) ear infection. As I head to the medicine cabinet to do my duty, the begging starts in.

“I’m sick, too, Mom! I need my medicine! I need purple medicine, I have a fever and the coughs! I need medicine, TOO!”

A few nights ago, after an unprecedented cry-and-disaster-free dinner, I announced that since everyone had been so great, we would have dessert that night.  We usually don’t, so the girls turned their bounce setting up to rocket-level at the imminent treat.  And what did they start begging for?

“Can I have the purple medicine? Silvia wants the orange and I want the purple.  Please?”

I am not making this stuff up. MY Tylenol does not come in a delicious cherry flavor, but I get by.  Why, for the love of God, do they have to make medicine taste so alluring for children? I honestly think I would prefer having the kids moan when their dosing comes up rather than this constant onslaught of desire. 

What happened to the good old days of cod liver oil and holding your child down in a wrestling hold to force a bitter brew down their throat?  My children WANT to be sick.  They PRETEND to be sick.  Not for TV shows, or resting on the couch or wearing PJ’s all day.

They do it for the drugs.  The delicious, jewel-toned drugs.

The last day of school was Friday and as a treat, I promised Logan and Ryan I’d take them up to our gym pool, which is actually a really nice, family oriented pool that includes spray features and a water slide. I’d had a long afternoon that day running tedious errands and attending back to back doctor appointments so heck, if I wasn’t going to be able to sit on the porch with a glass of wine and relax, sitting poolside with the latest issue of People while my boys amused themselves for an hour didn’t seem like too bad an idea.

Since it was just me and the older two (Rob hanging back at the house with Adam), I had zero expectations of myself getting wet, and even though it was well after 5 PM, the sun was still out in full force so I found the perfect warm spot, spread my towel over the pool chair, stretched myself out,and fished the literary masterpiece out of my pool bag. The boys ran off to swim. Ahhh. Peace. Relaxation. At last.

“MOMMY! MOMMY! LOOK AT ME! WATCH!”

I glanced up to see Ryan waving frantically, smiled at him and gave a thumbs up to confirm that yes, I saw him put his head underwater.

He’s seven and a half now and has been swimming underwater for the better part of three years.

Back to People.

“WANNA SEE ME GO DOWN THE SLIDE?”

I watched as my almost nine year old rode down the yellow, tunneled water slide. Thumbs up again. Now back to the latest about a certain family with one heck of a bunch of kids…

“LOOK! MOMMY! I CAN TOUCH THE BOTTOM WITH MY FEET!”

Ryan was standing just out of the zero depth area in water that came up to his waist. A toddler with a life vest splashed next to him.

“I’M GOING DOWN THE SLIDE AGAIN! WATCH!” Logan commanded,and after I watched him repeat his talent of sliding into the water, another child around his age requested that I, too, watch HIM attempt this amazing feat. Ditto for the next five children in line.

“WHEN CAN WE GET ICEES?” Good Heavens, we’ve been here for 15 minutes! Already refreshments were calling. I also was beginning to see the light here and it was  flashing a neon message of DON’T EVEN THINK POOLSIDE RELAXATION, BABY. I sighed, put the magazine away, and turned my attention back to the chorus of “watch mes” that by now seemed to be coming from all different areas of the pool. It’s as if they were  suddenly hit with their own message signaling that Mommy might be thinking of something else besides them for a second.

What is it about my kids that alerts their radar to whenever they are nowhere on mine?