I just love birthdays that last for weeks on end! My birthday officially began yesterday as Thing Two and I trekked down to HMB to meet Robin and Julie (and Ian and Baby Kai) for a late breakfast. The three of us meet at least three times a year as close as we can to each person’s birthday to celebrate. Things got a bit messed up last year & earlier this year, so we decided to start all over b/c we couldn’t remember whose birthday we were on (we are frequently a few months off). Julie decided that we should call it my birthday since we were meeting in my birthday month. I wasn’t going to argue with that!
Meet Baby Kai. These pictures really don’t do her justice. She has curly, but not kinky, hair, and a great personality. As much as Julie has always loved children and wanted a family, and as much as she has taken care of other people’s kids, it’s great to see her with her own daughter. She was a total natural.
I’d have been happy to get together, even w/o birthday presents (yes, really), but there were presents. Julie has taken up stamping and creative paper arts (you should have seen the fancy handmade baby announcement!). She made me a cool Christmas decoration. Robin’s present arrived in my email late last night — an Amazon.com gift certificate. Woo hoo! Now, to decide what to do with it.
It really was great to hang out. I’m so grateful for long-standing friendships that survive all of life’s transitions. At one time, we were single women, staying up till 1:00 a.m. playing Scrabble and watching “American Gladiators” (Robin) or sneaking out to decorate the Billster’s car with construction paper Band-Aids after a car accident (Julie). Now, we were having breakfast at Robin’s comfortable coastside house with three of our kids playing and making noise in the other room. Very cool.
The big milestone of the day was that I held Kai for a long time. This was the first time I held a baby since Paul died. I’m sure there are babies I wouldn’t want to hold, but I knew as I was driving down that I was going to want to hold her, and it would be OK. I really was fine with it — maybe b/c she’s a girl and looks nothing like Paul. Who knows? Who cares why? I was really glad that it went well. For so long, I’ve been afraid to hold a baby b/c I’ve been afraid I’d start crying and never stop and that I wouldn’t let go. Now, I doubt I could M&M, but that’s a whole different story b/c they’re boys, and being family, they do look at least a tiny bit like Paul. Anyhow, I was really happy to hold her. Thanks, Jules, for letting me! Thing Two really liked her, too.
Our next gathering will be an “everyone” time with husbands and kids, probably at our house b/c Julie still hasn’t been here, in January for Robin’s birthday.
Thanks, gals, for a great time! Love you!
OK, this is more like what I was going for when I did that stupid “Tribble Flower”. The problem with the Tribble Flower (besides using Squiggle on it) was that I made it too big, so I had to wrap it around & around & around. These only had four increases, so they weren’t too big.
