Happy Birthday To Me

Today is my 33^rd birthday and I have a few thoughts.  Things have changed.  For starters I now find myself trimming nose hairs and my light-but-totally-there mustache.  I also regularly pluck a hair or two from my neck which have grown unruly.  Today, I discovered broken blood vessels alongside my left nostril which no amount of concealer can cover.  It makes me wonder if I should cut-out alcohol altogether so as to avoid looking like a complete wino by my 40^th birthday.  Pffftttt!  After having the girls it would seem that my chest (as in ribcage, perv) has permanently expanded as have other parts that take up a wider area than before.  Although, I will say that I will not be ashamed to put on a bikini this summer provided I keep-up a workout routine and maybe stop eating multiple bags of Cadbury mini-eggs, chocolate birthday cake, and drinking glass bottles of Pepsi.  Guess which one of those was an impulse buy (and in case you’re thinking it was the six bags of Cadbury mini-eggs you would be sadly mistaken).  Anyway, things are not looking good and I can’t wait to see what will happen in the next 7 years…*long pause*

There are other aspects that aren’t so bad, relatively speaking anyway.  While most people get their Bachelor’s degree by the age of 22 I am getting mine this summer at the age of 33.  Maybe not what my parents had in mind but if you ask me I kick-ass more for doing it now than doing it earlier.  I’ve also discovered an ability to run helped along by the fact that I frequently find myself pushing 60 extra pounds of weight around.  I would say those are my two biggest accomplishments for the moment.

So, here I sit.  This year my birthday falls on a Friday and in years past that alone would have been cause for celebration.  As it is, the only thing I can possibly fathom for a fun-filled Friday birthday is to do some homework and maybe get a movie from Redbox.  So, yeah, things have changed.

Confession

Sometimes I do things that I know will upset Alexandra just so she can learn to get over it.

A Brief Glimpse Of Florida

We recently returned from a very nice family vacation in Florida.  We unintentionally took Alex to the Magic Kingdom for her 3rd birthday (unintentional because it was a last minute decision that just so happened to correspond with her birthday); ventured around some sort of aquatic preserve that thankfully we got in for free because I can't see how they can possibly justify the $12 price tag; and took the girls to the Jacksonville Zoo which was just amazing.

The house we stayed in was amazing as well and had a pool with hot tub facing the green of a golf course.  I was more than a little anxious the first day we were there when Marcus opened the sliding glass door and both girls began flitting about the outskirts of the pool.  Josephine is a proficient walker but she made me so nervous with her sometimes wobbly steps and propensity for falling.  "Marcus, isn't she making you nervous, she's making me super nervous!" I said to which he replied "If she falls in I'll go in after her."  At this point I decided it was best for my anxiety and blood pressure to go back into the house because standing around waiting for the inevitable was killing me.  And, yes, the inevitable did happen.  Not but a few minutes after walking into the house a soaking Josephine and half soaking Marcus were standing at the door asking for a towel.  At least, as Marcus's brother pointed out, Marcus did what he said he would and rescued her.  Yeah.

Another aspect of the house was the girls slept slightly farther away from us without the aid of a monitor.  We figured if anything happened we would certainly hear them crying and boy, did we.  On the second night, the entire house awoke to screams of panic:  "MOMMY!  DADDY!!  DADDY!!!!" accompanied by blood curdling screams.  Upon first waking I thought it was our nephew who is 9 months old.  Then, I thought it was Josephine at which point I was ready to completely ignore her.  Then, I thought, wow, Jo sure can enunciate "mommy" and "daddy" really well all of a sudden.  It was at that point I realized it was Alexandra.  (In my defense, it's so uncharacteristic of Alex to wake like this it truly took me by surprise...and especially in the middle of the night.)  Anyway, I imagine Marcus went through the same mental process because once he figured out it was Alex he bolted out of bed and went running.  Apparently she had either falling into/sleepwalked/we really don't know what the hell she did but she had made her way into Jo's pack-and-play which was right next to the king size bed Alex was occupying.  King size bed.  How the hell did she manage to get herself into a position that eventually found her in Jo's tiny a$$ pack-and-play?  It would be like me walking through a pair of open double doors but managing to still walk into the door jamb (or something like that).  Despite her distress, and I felt really bad when I did, but I laughed. 

Overall, the experience was great.  Alexandra, who has a propensity for going berserk (i.e. have complete, and total breakdowns at the drop of a hat) in new settings, was able to keep it in check until the last day or two of our stay.  Josephine seemed to enjoy herself and had only one or two meltdowns that I can recall.  Believe it or not, I'll call that a success! 

Curses (Rated R, Possibly NC-17 For Language)

Does anyone realize how God damn fucking hard it is not to fucking curse around kids?  Really fucking hard.  On the bright side I have been able to stop dropping the f-bomb like a mother fucking boss and now tend to say "frick" which makes me feel like the blonde chick from Scrubs.  Shit has successfully turned into "sugar" though the force with which I say it should constitute it as a curse word.  I was never really one to use the word bitch or ass so those have all but disappeared from my lexicon.  Unfortunately, however, I have picked up using some other, less desirable words like "dumb-dumb" which escapes my lips frequently.  It's not necessarily a bad word but it is mean.  I even used it with Josephine one day when she was about to launch herself off a two foot high ledge.  I did feel bad the second I said it.  Other highly frowned upon terms such as the highly despised God damn and Jesus Christ are new language developments for me and, unfortunately, frequently used in the presence of the girls though usually when they're doing something idiotic like an alligator death role as I'm smearing diaper rash cream on their ass butt.  But God damnit, does anyone know what it's like to have white diaper rash cream get everywhere because your kid is acting like a fucking dumb-dumb?  It's a fucking son-of-a-bitch to clean it up and the rest of the day is spent smelling like a medicine cabinet.  Oh, well.  Some people are absolute saints when it comes to this shit but not me.  It's too God damn hard.