Sunday was Daughter#2's 12th birthday. I just got done with one teenager and now I'm bracing myself for round number 2. This one's witnessed her sister's teen years and has picked up a few pointers along the way. Something tells me she might turn out to be a handful and bit more rebellious. Either I'll be keeping you posted Internet or I'll be heavily sedated.
It feels really strange that everywhere we go, anyone who sees us together, tells us how much we look alike. Daughter#1 looks more like her Dad, whereas Daughter#2 is undeniably my spitting image. I don't know if this is a good thing; but we have wide smiles and eyes that squint when we laugh. Because of this we were both called "China girls" in school. Daughter#2 has mentally recorded and reproduced any funny face I come up with, although her Dad is always asking her to be more serious and stop horsing around. (Then I go and make a horse sound in the background and Dad throws his papers in the air in a desperate act of surrender).
This year, instead of the annual birthday party we decided to organize something smaller. This turned out be a lot more fun than a bunch of noisy kids running around, wreaking havoc, asking if the birthday cake comes in other flavours, and why we have so many drawers in the bathroom, and is the neighbour's dog supposed to be sleeping with its legs in the air. I took the Birthday Girl, her bestest friend in the whole wide world and her sister ("I'm just tagging along to keep you company Mom", my foot) to the amusement park. We had fun and they even managed to talk me into driving a bumper car; where I got pretty banged up because other people's kids thought I was teasing them when I waved them away, "please don't crash into me".
Got sunburnt, drank slurpies (frozen juice), went on rides, saw a silly movie, Birthday Girl won herself a teddy bear, ate out. Came home exhausted yet suprisingly refreshed. The girls were pleased and my little Birthday Girl thanked me for "the best birthday ever". Wait until she discovers alcohol.
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Debriefing
- Flubberwinkle
- Athens, Greece
- Half of the day they call me "Athena" where I get paid to dabble with computers. The other half of the day I'm called "Mom", but I also have an online secret identity. I am bilingual, so what might look like Greek to you, probably is. I blog because it's cheaper than therapy and I like to make people laugh.
