M's Birthday Post

Celebrations

tonight - sushi with Grandma, Grandpa, Lucy, Mabel, J and M, followed by Chocolate Guinness
tomorrow - Major Sporting Event
Friday - birthday party at Daddy's restaurant
Saturday - Major Musical Event
Sunday - K and D, and dinner at Daddy's restaurant again
next Wednesday - dinner at fancy restaurant on the corner with Grammy and Grandpa

Some Things About M at Just-Turned Ten

- She went to her first slumber party on Saturday night and had a great time.
- This year she finally started sleeping through the night almost every night.
- She has just started reading grown-up books, mainly about food.
- Every day she reads at least one Little House, Betsy-Tacy, or Abby Hayes book, if not several. She has read each book in the series' more times than I could count.
- At every tee ball practice, she is out on the field with the dads, playing catch with the kids. She wants to play softball next year.
- She and her friends (girls and boys) are into Yo Momma jokes and pinching each other hard enough to make marks.
- She likes to wear a short dress over jeans.
- She made homemade ice cream sandwiches from her new kids cookbook the other night.
- She stays home alone while I run errands or pick up E from school.
- She is not ready to be a teenager.

M Shares Her Birthday With:

Queen Victoria
Bob Dylan
Lillian Gilbreth (just found that one out on Wikipedia--she will be thrilled)
my friend B

Ruminations

The other day, walking home from yoga, I thought about how I started doing yoga in January 1996, when I was four months pregnant with M. I kept at it pretty consistently through my eighth month pregnant with E (unlike my beautific prenatal yoga class in Berkeley, in Red State Capital City Suburb I just stayed in my regular class and my teacher modified for me). With two kids, though, yoga fell by the wayside, and I only picked it up again regularly this January, when I was unemployed and S gave me a membership to the gym for Hanukkah and I worked out maniacally to maintain my sanity.

There are other points of commonality between when M was born and now: the week after M was born, S became managing partner of a restaurant; this month he became chef of X. When M was born, I knew what I would be doing for the next year, and after that came the great unknown; right now I know what I will be doing for the next year, and after that comes the great unknown.

I'm not quite sure what to make of these parallels. I don't think the next decade will be much like the last one, and that's ok. I wonder how much of M at 20 is already visible in M at 10. Certainly M at 10 is beyond anything we could possibly have imagined on May 24, 1996.

It seems inconceivable that I have been a mother for a decade, that she has been alive for a decade, but although sometimes I wish I could click my heels and make her (and her sister) disappear (temporarily, at least), I can't imagine life without her. Who would approve (or disapprove) my fashion choices? Who would sit in the cafe and read with me? Who would go for the longest walks with me? Who would tell me to calm down? Who would get her sister to behave, or at least try? Who would sing the same song over and over?

Luckily, I don't have to answer those questions.