Today is my Birthday

Today is my birthday. I awoke this morning, as I do every day, with my joints achy and creaking. As I stumbled and bumped my way into the bathroom, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Looking back at me was a woman that doesn't look anything like she did years ago. There are wrinkles where there once was smooth skin, strands of gray hair amongst the brown, and certainly, everything that once was firm and perky is now flabby and sagging!

A few moments after I awoke, our three year old daughter bounced into the bathroom announcing that she wanted a smiley face pancake for breakfast. "...Just a minute, I'll make you some breakfast just as soon as I take my medicine." As I popped my "happy pill" and my "high blood pressure pill" and my "cholesterol-reducing pill", I thought to myself that there are days when I think I'm just too old to be a toddler's Mom. It is true, after all, that most of my friends who are my age are enjoying being grandparents. Or at least their kids are in school and out of diapers. Something which I wonder if it will happen simultaneously in our household as Olivia STILL hasn't mastered the whole potty thing and she's going to be four in one month. I have visions of packing a pull-up in her school lunch bag. (ugh.) Like I said, some days, I just feel like I'm too old for all of this!

A few hours after breakfast, after I unplugged the toilet, wiped up spilled juice, tried to balance what little money is left in the checkbook, helped Olivia blow her nose ten times, started to clean the kitchen and was interupted several times (deciding that it's my birthday, so maybe I just won't do the dishes until tomorrow...) and glanced sideways at our wedding photo - I chuckled to myself as I thought back to the years when I was younger and a little more care-free. In just the five short years I've been married, I've gone from "the most beautiful bride anyone has ever seen with a waist 'this' big" (to quote my cousin) to a middle-aged Mom of a toddler wondering whatever happened to her waist.

I sat down briefly to check my email. What's this? - an email from my dear husband, part of which reads, "...until she rose to look into the mirror. To peer at the image of a woman now one year older. A bit worn from the stress of being part of a business family and the mother of an active three year old; yet strikingly beautiful to her husband..."

Wow. Tears filled my eyes as my heart melted and I fell in love with Randy all over again. This was a time when he got it - just right.

...."Mommy! Puhleeeze come and fill my sippy cup! I want Orange-Strawberry-Banana Juice!" "Okay Olivia, I'm coming!" (smile) Happy Birthday to me.