BALLS

While in Kauai you tagged along to see some pretty amazing things...


Waimea Canyon

 

Wailua Falls

Hanalei Bay


But out of all these sites in Kauai that you were awake to see, this one was by far your favorite...

The Christmas trees at our resort.  "Balls" as you called the ornaments, you always made sure to pull at least one off the tree anytime we went by. 

SPECTACULAR

Your first 4th of July was spent watching the fireworks down on the waterfront. It was spectacular!  You probably would've thought so too, if you could have seen what I saw.

OK, so for your first 4th of July you didn't really spend it watching fireworks.  It was mostly spent watching the tree covered in Christmas lights and a big guy in a red sweatshirt standing in front of you.  Not so spectacular.  Maybe next year. 

GREEN THUMB

Thanks for my Mother's Day gift.  It's a little geranium that you "made" at Julie's.  Between you and my lack of a green thumb, I give this doomed sprout about 30 more days to live. 

MOMMIE DEAREST

Mother's Day celebrates that ideal of love and sacrifice, otherwise known as motherhood.  This year I got to celebrate my first Mother's Day because of you.  32 hours of labor?  Yeah, I'd say I more than earned this day.

That's why I turned it into a whole weekend.  Well, it kind of worked out that way due to scheduling.  Thanks to you and your dad for being good sports and accompanying me to Bend to visit some good girlfriends. 

Maybe one day you, Aerilyn, and Adeleine will be as good of friends as me, Kathleen and Rachelle are.  I'm sure you won't hold it against them that they spent all weekend trying to feed you with their doll's plastic baby bottle. 

HIPPITY HOP

Your first Easter was spent picking on your cousin...

And getting the obligatory picture of you and this creepy guy...

I'm referring to the Easter Bunny, not your cousin. 

PRETTY IN PINK

For the past six years or so, every St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated with a huge Irish feast with friends. And every year since it’s inception, the men are in charge of the entire event. The women get to sit back and watch the fiasco unfold before their eyes.

Many of those years we didn’t sit down to eat until close to 9:30PM. Sometimes it was a stretch for Irish cuisine, with the principle of if it’s green, it counts. Since when was spinach cheese dip considered Irish? One time dinner consisted mostly of lots of boiled potatoes. Actually not lots, but tons of boiled potatoes.

Over the years the men have finely tuned this night. This year it was a 5-course meal with beef stew, split pea soup, corned beef, cabbage, mashed potatoes with kale, shepherd’s pie, and green cupcakes. Not only was it a fantastic meal, but we ate at a decent hour. Quite the feast.

The only thing that could have been improved that night would have been your wardrobe. That St. Patrick’s morning I realized you own nothing but pink clothes, as I rummaged through your dresser trying to find something green for you to wear that day.

Pink is my absolute favorite color and with you being a girl, I realized that I let pink consume your life, or at least your wardrobe. The only thing green you had were socks and the only reason you had those socks were because they came in a package with pink socks.

Thanks to a quick shopping trip during lunch, I added a little green to your wardrobe for dinner that night. I really hope that pink becomes your favorite color because I have a feeling that as hard as I may try, you will always have an unusually disproportionate number of pink clothes, just like me.

BABY'S FIRST CHRISTMAS

 Well, you survived your first Christmas and accomplished most of the requisite things babies are supposed to do on their first Christmas. We had our first visit to Santa. Not only once, but twice. It took two tries to get a decent Santa picture. Two tries, and I still forgot to put socks and shoes on you.

I don't know who was more embarrassed at the mall. Me or the other moms waiting in line with their kids, for me. Since then, you haven't left the house without shoes and socks. Grandma Kathy must have picked up on this too. For Christmas she gave you about a dozen pairs of socks. Coincidence, or not?

HALLMARK HOLIDAYS

Since your birth, we've been on track to celebrate every remaining major Hallmark holiday for the year with you. Thanks to the commercialization of the American holidays, I've been brainwashed to believe that I'm not a good parent unless you experience each and every holiday with either gifts and/or candy. Lots of gifts and/or candy. Sure there's deeper meaning to all the holidays, but you probably won't learn to appreciate it until you're an adult.

I almost blew it right off the bat with Halloween, but pulled through in the end. Which isn't bad, considering you were three weeks old when Halloween came around. That night we dressed you up in a bunny outfit and sat you in your baby lounger down in the basement. And that was your first Halloween.

No running around the neighborhood collecting candy for you, which would inevitably wind up being for your dad and me. No neighbors oohing and awwing over your cute costume. You didn't even get to answer the door with me and pass out candy to the kids. Nope, none of that. Thanks to a ghoulish invisible monster running rampant that night, swine flu.

You couldn't have been born at a more terrifying time. All over the news people were warned of the impending pandemic caused by this new type of influenza that was deadlier than any other type in recent years. People lined up for hours to get the vaccine and there were mass shortages. Otherwise healthy people who could normally fight off the regular flu were dying from this new flu that came from pigs. Everyone was warned on Halloween to disinfect their door bells and knobs frequently and to not let kids reach their grimy little hands into the candy bowl, so as to not pass along the swine flu.
That's why you spent Halloween night hanging out in the basement, and that's why there was no candy or oohing and awwing. Not that you probably cared about it. You didn't miss out on much upstairs. We got 3 whole trick-or-treaters. I thought I'd be the "cool house" and emptied the candy bowl filled with full sized candy bars into their bags, blew out the jack-o-lanterns, turned off the porch light, and called it a night.

From that night I learned that our neighborhood sucks for trick-or-treating. We were the only ones on the street to have carved pumpkins, and trick-or-treaters were next to non-existent. When you're old enough to realize that Halloween is all about the candy, I won't let you down. We'll drive to a rich neighborhood filled with McMansions and do the trick-or-treating there. If you're going to make the effort to trick-or-treat, why waste your time on snack-size candy bars. Go to where the full sized ones are, and lots of them, right?