maybe i'm not accepting my age well

Really, the numbers hadn't bothered me all that much the past couple years. Turning 30 wasn't as hard for me as it is for some, and 31 & 32 passed uneventfully.

However. As a "happy birthday" present this year, the DMV sent me a license renewal notice with a picture required. I sat in the car in the parking lot to touch up my makeup & hair, attempting in vain to hide the signs of aging that have bombarded me the past few months as 33 approached, as well as the annoying post-Lizzie "baby hairs" that are growing out and looking altogether lovely. Thoughts of commercials promising a reduction in the visible signs of aging started running through my mind, and I wondered why I hadn't prepared more vigorously for this day by exfoliating & penetrating & shrinking & minimizing.

And it hit me even harder than it did on my b-day: I will never again, as long as I live, look young. Sure, I don't get offered senior citizen discounts, and I do look like I'm in my 30s (with the amount of sleep I usually get, it's often my late 30s), but I will never again pass for a 20-something. If I'm carded, it will be by some 20-something kid who's trying to butter me up for a bigger tip. I look old, and there's no going back.

OK, not OLD, old. But you know, old. To the teens I teach, I'm somewhere in the same group as their parents. To the kids at the local college, I'm in that "your old but your hair's not gray, so I don't have to be nice to you, right" age group. And these days, when some guy pays attention to me, it's because my child is making off with a candy bar at the store and he's warning me of the impending shoplifting charges, should she get away.

Sigh. Aging. How did this happen?

wordless wednesday

beach hair

ps- I also get beach hair. Why can't it look this cute?

this is me eating my words

They are both upstairs in separate rooms right now, screaming at the top of their lungs in outraged defiance, kicking walls & slamming doors (ok, Lizzie was only kicking her crib and to my knowledge, did not slam any doors; I'm exaggerating). They are supposed to be sleeping peacefully. I've only been home 30 minutes and I've given two spankings and broken up two fights. Occasionally the raucous is strikingly similar to the earthquakes we've been having.

I vaguely remember saying something both last night and this morning about making progress with sleeping and behavior. Ummm, yeah. Some progress.

she doesn't smell like a baby anymore

Lizzie went and embraced real food, and so, her baby smell went out the window. When she's just finished nursing, I can still catch a whiff of that heavenly scent on her neck. Until she poops that awful big-baby stuff that bears no resemblance to the non-offensive, sweet smelling "mustard" of 100% nursing babies. I'm happy for her and all, and it's exciting to see her grow, and I don't actually want her to stay a baby for ever, but that smell is so sweet and small and new and precious. Ugh. At least her skin's still soft. That is, until she finally remembers that she knows how to crawl and starts roughing up those baby knees.

well THAT was interesting

I'd set myself up, for sure, but after years and years of the same user name and password for everything but banking, my email was finally hijacked. Everything was changed, so I couldn't get in for about a week. And because it's my login for blogger, too, I couldn't come here, either. But we're back in business after only several headaches to get things back in order.

While I was out:
Lizzie's first tooth peeked through the gum on the evening of my birthday, which helped to make up for the fact that she screamed all day on my b-day (also my first day at home for the summer).

The most excited flower girl in the world loved being in the wedding, and in the end, relinquished her position as the groom's top girl to the bride, transferring her affections for the groom to the little ring bearer. All was right in the end. Except that I forgot the camera, and we took only one quick family photo the entire day, even though fully one half of our family was in the wedding. But I did remember the extra pair of tights, so I'm not all that bad. And surely there was a photo of her taken by someone, somewhere.

Lizzie finally embraced eating food after looking lustfully at ours for months now. After over a month of consistently trying to get her to take bites of cereal, she's now excited about being a big girl and impatient if I take too many of my own bites in between hers.

Pink learned how to insult her daddy:
"Daddy, did you just toot?"
"Yes."
"I don't like the smell of your toots."
"Well, don't smell it then."
"Well, it comes towards me!"

School ended, graduation went off without a hitch, mama has done fully 8 loads of laundry and cleaned 2 bathrooms, and we are well into our obsessive summer fruit eating and freezing. So really, the usual.

Thanks for stickin around.

wordless wednesday

Road Trip

well, nevermind

Those seniors who gave me a lump in my thoat, who worked their way up to passing? Yeah. They (read: a large percentage of the 550 total seniors on campus) had organized a mass water balloon fight at lunch. Two Assisstant Principals were hit numerous times, and needless to say, heads are rollin' even as I write this. Lunch was cut short, seniors were sent to the gym, and even I was a bit scared as our looks-scary-on-a-good-day principal stripped them of all remaining senior activities and threatened to take away their graduation ceremony.

So I guess maybe they're not quite as ready as they seemed the other day when they were all dressed up for their professional, mock interviews. Uhn-hunh. Not quite as grown up. But I still can't help but feel excited for them and their ignorance, and laugh at their immaturity, much as a wise freshman teacher once told me that to laugh at farts in class is to embrace the personhood of each student. This stinks, but it's a part of who they are.