Growing up, being single, or even married without kids birthdays are generally AWESOME! Cupcakes at school, a billion facebook posts from people you thought completely forgot who you were, presents and nice dinners with the hubby or even a day off of work.
Even though I have a baby, I think I still thought my birthday would be as carefree as they were before Adelyn. Yesterday was my realization that work doesn't stop when you have a child. I'm not complaining. I love Adelyn so much. Just getting down what I thought was a comically rough birthday.
Starting out- when it's your birthday without a child you get to sleep in. Adelyn didn't get the memo and decided to get up even earlier than normal. 5:45 am. Awesome. It's okay, I can do this. Sadly my poor baby is having a rough time with teething. So there was lots of crying involved. That means lots of running around, trying to find different things to keep her mind off of her teeth, and getting bit (hard) when when I put the teething gel in her mouth. Not my ideal situation for my birthday. Please know that I am sympathetic to my sweet little girl when she's teething. I try everything possible to help her.
But, despite the rough morning we had, I put on my make-up, altered my new shirt to be "Mormon modest" (sewing up the sleeves a little bit to make it have cap sleeves), and got dressed for the day. I tried to look nice. I was proud that I was able to alter my shirt! I even dressed Adelyn in a cute outfit. After getting dressed she was in a bad mood so I put on Lady and the Tramp. Sometimes it's the only thing that will calm her down.
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| My new shirt. Please excuse the mess :) |
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| Calming her down |
I decided that what I wanted for my birthday was to not cook a single meal. I picked up Joseph at work and we all went to Subway for lunch. I was trying not to completely kill my diet because I wanted fajitas for dinner. My poor baby's mouth hurt so bad when she bit into a goldfish cracker that she put her head down on the table and cried. Joseph was awesome and took her outside and showed her a video of the fish and hippos from when we went to the zoo. She loved it and calmed down enough that we could give her yogurt. She was really hungry on top of her mouth hurting. Poor girl.
Adelyn and I went to this bakery that I found online that only sells cookies. I LOVE cookies. I would much rather have a good cookie than a cake for my birthday. So we went over there to pick some up. She was in a surprisingly good mood. Especially when I let her try one of the cookies. Joseph doesn't like chocolate chip so I was able to get him some lemon cookies and sugar cookies. They were all really good! Then I saw this jumbo chocolate chip cookie, dipped in dark chocolate, and had M&M's and sprinkles. That's what I wanted! I bought the cookies and we went home. Adelyn fell asleep in the car so I waited for her to wake up. Luckily she woke up in a good mood.
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| It was the cookie on the left. This is the picture from the website. |
But then about 30 minutes later she threw a fit! Not from teething, just because she wanted to throw one. So we went outside for a walk. She's our nature baby. She likes collecting acorns and organizing them into piles. Joseph calls them her treasures because that's how much she loves them. I took her for a walk around the block. She wanted to play with the ants so I had to pick her up. She HATED that. I ended up having to carry her while she was flat out on her stomach. She kicked the whole way back home. It was also 90 degrees with 86% humidity.
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| I changed her out of the skirt and put her in little shorts because I liked it better. |
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| Organizing her acorns |
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| Hunting for acorns |
The rest of the day that she was awake went about like that. Luckily she goes to bed around 7. We ordered dinner from one of our favorite Mexican places and picked up Les Miserables from Redbox. We ate dinner, loved the movie, and enjoyed our cookies. By the time the movie was over my stomach was hurting. I thought I had just ate too much. No biggie, I'll sleep it off. I hate throwing up so I wouldn't just do it to relieve the pain. But my body said, you better get in that bathroom quick! Adelyn's bed is behind our thin wall to the bathroom. I apparently woke her up. One good thing we learned is that she'll allow Joseph to go in and comfort her back to sleep. She was up almost as much as I was. I felt so bad. After a while we realized that she was also probably teething so we gave her some medicine and she fell right back to sleep. Luckily everyone was able to go to sleep around 12:30. Then around 1 am there was a big storm! Of course. So grateful that Adelyn slept through it. And then she got up at 5:25 am. Awesome. It's okay, I did it.
Although being child free usually equals having a way less tiring and stressful birthday, I love being a mom. There are so many more moments to enjoy. I love cuddling with her, I love her laugh, and her smile. I'm sure having multiple children makes your birthday even harder to enjoy. But once my children are grown up, my birthdays can be awesome again. Like when Joseph takes me to Italy for my birthday in 2037. The whole day wasn't at a loss though. I did have fun eating dinner with Joseph and watching Les Mis. Next year I will have better expectations :)
