birthdays, and milestones
Well.. firstly HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!
parsleigh!!!! Many many more...
Today also happens to be my oldest daughter Kristen's 21st!!!! birthday. Oy.. I'm not that old, am I? I can't have a 21 year old and a 16 year old daughter who's driving, can I? Oh. I do. urgh. It really doesn't seem that long, looking back at it. Really doesn't.
We blinked, and our girls were going out on their own... Kristen to UW Madison, thence to England for last term, and now finishing up a bunch of travelling through Europe (Paris, south of France, Rome, Florence, Switzerland, Germany, and then off to Amsterdam.) Which is where her best friend and roommate spent last term at an art school, living on a houseboat. She's celebrating her 21st birthday in Amsterdam? whoo boy. What happens in Amsterdam, stays in Amsterdam, and I don't really want to know about it. Amsterdam. OK.
mdonat and I are also celebrating our 24th wedding anniversary this week (was Monday). We went to a Cubs game, at one of the skyboxes/corporate places across Sheffield (east side of ballpark) yesterday. Yup. A Cubs game. Wonderful wife. BTW we slaughtered the Padres 11-3... sweep!
Again... 24 years married? huh? We looked at our wedding pictures recently. Most of us have much less poundage, less grey hair, and some of us aren't bald yet! Oh, my.
John Lennon was right when he commented that life was what happened when you were planning for other things. If you had told me 24 years ago where I'd be, and what I'd be doing, I would laugh and laugh and laugh.. because you never think of those things when your're in your 20's and just married....
But.. I digress. The things that I know from this continuing journey is for the parents of little ones, and ones to come soon!!....
Hang on to this time. Hang on tight and marvel at it while it's going on. This is the most magical time you will ever have, issues (which will be legion) notwithstanding. Even now, in our early dotage! (ha!) we look back at old videos of the girls and marvel that they were that small or that cute, or how silly we were as parents with our kids.
Make sure that you take lots of pics of ##2 also, as they will be completely different in temprament, etc as you can believe, which is really strange, given that you have an older kid, too, and they're so different in many ways. The same, in some, too... (the whole argument about nature/nurture I'll leave for a subsequent post) We've heard volumes about the difference in pics, etc between #1 and #2, from #2. Ya think?
There are things that I do not like about getting older.. too many to list.. but getting older means that I'm able to watch my girls grow up into wonderful people with their own minds and personalities, who will make their own mark on this world.. A positive mark, (one can hope). but whatever happens, they're my girls, and I'm their dad.
Happy 21st Birthday Kristen! May they be many and fruitful.