The Birthday Zone

If I seem rather quiet on my blog this week and if I've totally strayed from listing unusual celebrations it's because I have some unusual celebrations of my own. I've entered (eerie music playing)...the birthday zone. Well, that and the fact that I'm spending inordinate amounts of time over here trying to win free stuff.

Yes, folks, even though there are 11 other perfectly good months in the year and even though each year has 51 other perfectly fine weeks, we managed to have both of our children within days of one another. Well, actually, we had a few years between those days, but their birthdates fall within days of each other.

When they were young we thought we had an advantage over other parents. We had one party for both and got off cheap. It was actually a party for my son and my daughter was so young that she just sort of tagged along and didn't know the difference. She thought all girls had construction worker parties and were dressed in Batman shirts and capes on their birthdays. And we wonder why she's a tomboy?!

When they got a little older we were still pretty cocky about our birthday status as we saw the longing in other parent's eyes to just get it all over with in a single week of the year. At that point our pat answer for birthdays was to just pile everybody into the car and head to the beach for a week. Everybody wins.

Then it happened. They wanted separate parties. We were devastated. Our little plan (or lack of planning) backfired on us. That was bad enough, but now we've come to this particular birthday week which is like no other.

As of this week, I no longer have young children in my home. I only have teenagers.

As if that wasn't bad enough, one of those teenagers wants to get his driver's license.

Why don't they just rip my little Mama's heart out and stomp it into the ground?

So, this week we are on spring break so Mama can take her mind off of the major events in her life by obsessing over winning prizes here and stuffing herself with the gluttonous amount of junk food that has come into the house under the guise of "celebrating". (And no, it's not low cholesterol, but low cholesterol foods are not comfort foods and right now I need comfort foods. So there.)

The kids, on the other hand are saying, "Hot Diggity!" because we usually don't take spring breaks. Plus, they are way too busy texting on their new cell phones to worry about school work and unimportant stuff like that. Yes, we caved and got them cell phones. They were sharing one "extremely old and embarrassing phone" as they called it and the reception had gotten so bad that you couldn't get a call if you were inside a building or had it in your pocket. Plus, the times they threw... uh...I mean dropped it on hard concrete floors probably didn't help much either. They are here, there, and everywhere these days so we need to be able to reach them and they, of course, NEED to text their friends.

That's my week in a nutshell. I'm partying and paying, partying and paying.

Some of you may read this and think, "But my kids are so young, I don't have to think about all that teenage stuff for a long time." But it's really just a blink of an eye. I can remember in vivid detail when my kids were just tiny little people and I thought these days would never come- I also thought I'd die of sleep deprivation, but that's another story for another time. The time goes so very, very quickly. If I could give one piece of advice to parents of young children it would be this: Savor every moment you have with your children and take nothing for granted. And don't let the world distract you or tell you that there are more important things to tend to in life. Love them now and when they are big teenagers they will still come up and hug you (when no one is looking of course) and say, "I love you." And then they'll ask for money (just kidding- sort of). What can the world offer that compares with that?