Having a good Mother is a wonderful thing...being a good mother is quite another. My children are grown and I am watching them raise families of their own now. Each of the three is half of a team of very good parents...two of the three are mom's. This particular blog posting is to remind them what good mothers they are in spite of the very "I'm only human" woman who raised them.
I married quite young; it seems to me I went from cuddling a Betsy Wetsy doll to the real thing over night. We had three babies in three years, and overwhelmed became my middle name.
Our son was born April 24th of our second year of marriage. The middle daughter was born August 27th of the following year, and a second baby girl arrived November 26th the year after that. At least I think so.
While everyone was tiny I managed with a production line approach to most things. Like three little ducklings they followed me from room to room, and when they didn't I knew they were conspiring against me and destroying property. Feeding, bathing and dressing were all done together...keep the line moving, was my motto.
The real tricky thing became finding time for each child, just 'me and thee' time to do some important parental bonding. And of course, we always made each one feel special on his or her birthday.
The birthday boy or girl got to choose their favorite meal for dinner, and there was always a special birthday cake, and ice cream, and gifts, and doting grandparents. Birthdays were a very special day, indeed.
Eventually everyone was in school and life with little ones slowed a bit, but now a full time job in addition to family life kept the pace healthy. At some point our middle daughter needed her birth certificate for a long forgotten reason, so I went to the family album to fish it out. To her horror (and my embarrassment) we had been celebrating her birthday on the wrong date for years. The August 27th And November 28th..or was it November 27th and August 28th? Whatever...I had been doing it wrong. That means the piñata had been hung on the wrong date, the Barbie doll cake devoured at the wrong time. Even the cupcakes had gone to school for the class treat on, you guessed it, the wrong day.
In my defense, I'm not a total wash out....I get their ages right and the month is solid. It's just that stinking 26-27 or 28 that gets me every doggoned time.
The years have passed and I'm happy to say my daughter has forgiven me. The whole family was together to celebrate her brother's birthday last month, and she made it a point to tell me I should just forgive myself for my birthday date faux pas. "After all, mom...it was only the first eight or ten developmental years of my life," she reminded me. Such a sweet girl! I'll have to come up with something really special for her birthday this year...on a date in August that will be announced later.
