For the last couple of days we’ve been trying to iron out plans for Alex’s birthday, which is about three weeks away. I’m always a little conflicted when it comes to planning his birthday parties…because he is an only child, I’m very mindful of making sure he knows that he is not the center of the universe. I want to make sure that he knows he is treasured and loved, of course, but I also want him to know that life is not All Alex, All The Time.

Don’t get me wrong. I think birthday parties are great, and certainly we want to celebrate Alex’s, but I have a need to keep it simple. I can’t make sense of throwing a three-year old in a room with 35 children and 60 parents and saying, “Okay, honey, we’re celebrating you!” Because it seems to me – and this is just my opinion and it oughta be yours – that when toddler birthday parties get that big, all that’s being celebrated is the parents’ ability to throw a top-tier shin-dig. And the Joneses and me – well, we don’t hang so much, as I hate, despise, and abhor the whole notion of “keeping up.” I feel very strongly about this. You might have noticed.

As a result, Alex has had birthday parties reminiscent of Ye Olde Amish celebrations, minus the horse and the buggy and, well, the Amish. His first birthday party consisted of his parents, his grandparents, and him. It was a rowdy affair, as you can imagine. For his second birthday party, we went all out. We had lunch for three (count ‘em, THREE) of Alex’s friends, his grandparents, our next door neighbors, our sweet friends NK and Michael, and my friend Pattie. There were THIRTEEN people there, y’all. Madness!

This year I initially planned to invite the same group of people, maybe even moving up to FOUR friends because I’m crazy like that. Crazy! But the place where we wanted to have his party charges $150 for, essentially, 10 juice boxes and ¼ sheet cake. No outside food. I can be cheap, as you know, and I was shocked, then plain insulted, by the price. I mean, if that’s the going rate for a child’s birthday party, then I’ll add the words “For Hire” behind the title at top of this web page, rent me a clown suit, learn how to transform balloons into animals and head out on the party circuit. For $100 an hour? I’m not proud.

Anyway, once we decided that paying $10 for a container of juice was a little too rich for our blood, we bandied about several party ideas. The park? It might rain. McDonald’s? I’m a germ-a-phobe – can’t take that many sticky little hands on playground equipment. Our house? The easiest option, for sure, but there’s been much discussion about All Our Stairs and David’s grandmother’s age and, bottom line, coming over here is a really hard trip for her. Not to mention that Alex is OBSESSED with his great-uncle Joe and talked all last night about having “Chox! And JOE!” at his birthday party.

For all these reasons, it looks like we’ll be heading to Meridian for Alex’s Big 0-3. We’ll have most of our family there, which means that 80% of Alex’s favorite people in the whole wide world will be in attendance. The more David and I have talked about it, the more we realize how perfect it will be for this stage of his life, where the coolest people in his universe are the people in his family. Better capitalize on that while it lasts.

So we’ve come full circle, it seems, for I also had my third birthday party at Mama and Daddy’s house…sitting on top of the table to blow out my candles on the 1-2-3-4 cake that Mama made from scratch.

Looks like the little man will get to do the same.

You know that I adore a funny Christian. You know that I contend we need more of ’em.

Well, here’s a blogger after my own heart. I laughed my head off. Sad thing is, given Daddy’s old album collection, some of these looked a little, um, familiar.

Enjoy, y’all.

And thanks, Sister, for the link.

This first time I wrote this post it was a bit of a rant, because yesterday was a HUMDINGER. Then I revised it, and the second post was much longer, much more introspective, much more thoughtful…but then I decided it was whiny, that people don’t come here for thoughtful, and I needed to get over myself already. Just for the record: I am over myself.

The bottom line of version 2.0 was this: I don’t write this blog for me. Ultimately, it’s for Alex, and not just because I hate a scrapbook and because the whole scrapbooking phenomenon makes me angry (sorry, EK)…all that cutting with special scissors and buying special papers and designing themes for displaying pictures from Billy’s 4th birthday – it is so not me on any level. Alex’s half-finished baby book is proof. But this blog is my digital scrapbook for Alex. He’ll be able to look at it one day and see what his parents are really like and that they actually have, you know, personalities. He’ll see comments from my childhood friends, high school friends, college friends, babymama friends – so he’ll know what y’all are like, too, and hopefully he’ll like you anyway. Oh, I’m kidding. You know I think you are, as Mama says, “the berries,” and while I don’t know what that means, exactly, I’m sure it’s positive.

He’ll see comments from his aunts and uncles and cousins…he’ll have a hunk of his family history right here in this little ole blog. He’ll have pictures, stories, details of our lives before and after his arrival, and all of that, to me, outweighs any short-term strains I’m feeling on my end. When he gets older, I can print each and every one of these entries, bind them together, and give him, essentially, a book of his life (not to be confused with The Book of Life, which is slightly better written and has far greater long-term benefits). I just think the whole concept is, in a word, cool. And even when I get a little tired or overwhelmed or bogged down, is the time this blog thing takes worth it? Yeah, it is. For lots of reasons.

So bear with me over the next few weeks. We have a whole lot going on in our neck of the woods. David is swamped with his work, and I’m swamped with my work, but at the same time we’re grateful to have work that we love. I’m cooking for some people who are performing at church next Thursday night, so there is much grocery shopping and prepping and chopping and baking to be done (THAT will be heaven on earth for me – pure therapy). Then there’s another meal to cook the next week (the one where they’re going to give us a baby). There’s also a little boy who’s turning three very soon, and I need to get on the ball with all the plans for that. In the midst of all the activity, blogging is going to have to take a backseat. I’ll still be around, of course, but probably just once a day. We’ll see how it goes.

Unfortunately, I am not in fact a robot, and I do require what the humans call “rest” and “sleep.” Go figure.

I’m sure Mike DuBose will do a great job at Millsaps.

I’m always happy to see a person get a second chance.

But this job being “a landing place where he and [his] wife…can retire”?

I doubt it.

Call me cynical, but I think it’s a step up on a ladder that leads straight back to the promised land of Division I football.

And this time around? I bet you a dollar to a donut that his secretary is pushing 80, tough as nails, and will slap his face if he so much as cuts his eyes the wrong way.

Thoughts?

Now, I try to be careful about the cutesy Alex stories, for reasons I’ll explain below. But this one, well, it’s funny. At least to me. So I’ll share.

I believe it’s been well-established that Alex is a talker, a chatty fella, if you will. But he’s now taking the talking one step further and repeating every. single. thing. his daddy says or does. Fortunately, his daddy doesn’t really say or do anything inappropriate (unless he’s tackling a home improvement project). It’s just that his daddy is very funny, and Alex tries to imitate the funny, and much hilarity ensues.

So last night, when I let David know that supper was ready, he walked into the kitchen, looked at all the fixins, and immediately began to sing an impromptu homily: “Sweet Mary, Mother of God, we have some meaaaaat-baaaallls.” Alex, who was standing in a kitchen chair, watched every move his daddy made, and then, perfectly on pitch: “Sweet Mary, mother of God, we got some meaaaaat-baaaallls.”

I mean, that IS funny. Exact same inflections. Exact same expressions. Couldn’t have sung it any better if he were administering the sacraments on a Sunday morning.

Last week I actually posted another example of how A. imitates his daddy, but David thought it just reeked of “Oh look at my child – isn’t he just an angel, an angel straight from heaven,” so I deleted the post. Don’t get me wrong – I think it’s wonderful to adore your children, but I try not to venture overboard lest my friends and family be tempted to ram their vehicles into large concrete barriers after reading the blog. The last thing in the world I want to be is That Mama, the one who puts up the facade that everything in her family is just perfect and wonderful and she never gets tired of meaningful interaction with her children and really, even though she tries to be humble about it, she’s tempted to put a bumper sticker on the back of her Suburban that says World’s Greatest Mom because she IS, y’all. She IS.

A couple of months ago I had to take A. to the doctor on a Sunday, and there were two other families in the waiting room. One family was sitting quietly, but the other family? Well, let’s just say that the MOTH-er? Who was READ-ing? BOOKS? To her LIT-tle GIRL? In loud SING-SONG tones? And “OH, SWEET-heart, do you SEE the BIRD in that PIC-ture? THAT is so PRET-ty! Isn’t that PRET-ty? OH, YES, the bird IS blue! VERY GOOD!” She went on and on, with EVERY DETAIL more EXCITING than the LAST!

It probably goes without saying that I have a hard time relating to mothers who talk to their children like they’re being filmed for some Learning Channel special about how to interact with toddlers, like the mamas in Target who so patiently explain, “NO, Hannah Grace, we don’t eat COOK-ies before LUNCH-TIME, but you can have a ba-NAN-a if you’d like” because meanwhile, I’m over on the canned goods aisle gritting my teeth down to nubs, with my face one inch from Alex’s, hissing, “Sit down in the cart. Right now. If you don’t sit. down. right. now. I will WEAR. YOU. OUT. Because I have HAD IT.”

Anyway, after the woman who was reading books in the doctor’s office got called back to a room, the other mother, the quiet mother, looked at me, looked at her husband, looked to make sure the READ-ing mother wasn’t listening and said, “Mark my word. She keeps THAT up? Reading like that? Her little girl will jump off of a building by the time she’s five.”

Now THAT’s a mama I’d like to know better.

Okay – so it’s not really a big secret that I am not a huge romantic. I am probably the least romantic girl I know, in fact. I don’t care about sweeping romantic gestures – your flowers, your chocolates, your jewelry. I especially don’t care for jewelry – I would much rather David sock that money away so that we can go on a big trip for our tenth anniversary (side note: one time I mentioned this to Mama, who said, “You’d rather take a trip than have another diamond?” I said, “Oh, yeah – any day.” And she replied, “Well, you’re crazy.”)

My point is that I tend to let holidays like, say, Valentine’s come and go with only a card as a token of my love and affection. If I’m really going all out, I’ll get David a CD or something (another side note: my sister, on the other hand, never misses a single holiday…this morning we were greeted by a Large Box of Goodies filled with all manner of age-appropriate toys for Alex as well as candy and a book for his mama).

When I woke up today I did process the fact that it was Valentine’s Day, and while I considered picking up happies for my husband, I ultimately thought, “You know, I bet David will kind of appreciate it if I don’t cave in to the commercialism of this manufactured holiday – I am not going to buy anything.” To me, at least at 6:30 this morning, this was an excellent idea – one of my better ones, in fact. I mean, what husband wouldn’t want for his wife to abandon all romantic expectations? That’s a good thing, right?

I was surprised to find a sweet email from D. in my inbox about an hour later, and I honestly thought it was a great V-Day token in and of itself. I was actually impressed that he remembered the day at all, as he has been very vocal in the past about his dislike for what he calls “Valentinian paraphernalia.” I sent him a sweet email in return, and in my mind, we were all done with the Valentine’s festivities. We’d expressed some lovely sentiments, end of story.

Did I mention that I’m not at all romantic?

Imagine my surprise this afternoon when I found a gift WITH A CARD (that’s even a bigger deal when D. is doing the giving) on the dining room table. He had picked out a new cookbook (I can read a cookbook like a novel, no kidding) AND a copy of Paula Deen’s new magazine. Nothing extravagant, mind you – but really thoughtful gifts that will be used and enjoyed by me for many years to come.

And do you know what I had to give my husband?

That would be JACK. And SQUAT.

He wasn’t upset at all. He was a little surprised – but not upset. I mean, I do usually give AT LEAST a card, but this year I didn’t even have that unless you count the cards that Alex got yesterday at Mother’s Day Out, and somehow I’m thinking that small animated greetings from Matthew and Avery and Claire and Charlie probably won’t mean too much to David.

So I am about to rectify this situation. I’m gonna make a big ole country supper – meatballs and gravy, egg noodles, butterbeans, biscuits, brownies and ice cream. And Alex and I are about to create the card of all cards. It’s going to be big and it’s going to be colorful and it’s going to be romantic. But somehow when I think about romantic cards I picture people feeding each other chocolate-covered strawberries while they hold hands in a field of dandelions as they sing love songs from the 70’s.

And that’s not really us.

So I think I’ll go for funny. Funny is most definitely us.

Off to redeem myself.

By the way, Happy Valentine’s Day, BooDaddy!

Even if I’m terrible at romantical gestures (and it’s very important to say “romantical,” as it isn’t really a word at all), I love you very much.