On Birthdays

Our birthday flowers from Friday are all dead so I guess it's official....the party's over and now we're forty.

Birthdays are always kind of sticky events around here. Drama Boy, Sparky, and often Squeaker have a difficult time if anybody gets anything that they do not get. They are of the mind that they are always getting gypped in some way if anybody else gets attention.

On Friday, we got cake and flowers and that was it but if Sparky had been here he still would have been a raging, cursing mess. Non-eventish as this one was we still did not get off scott-free. Drama Boy had a big crying fit when Ana would not drive him to his friend's house nor allow him to walk all the way across town to find him. He spent all afternoon blubbering over the phone book trying to find his friend's listing since he had neglected to ask for his phone number. He did okay at dinner then screamed at Squeaker when she asked him to come downstairs for cake.

We've had crying, screaming meltdowns on every birthday so far this year. This snarkiness is not limited to birthdays. Both the boys were on the receiving end of the "it's not all about you" lecture on Squeaker's adoption day last summer and Squeaker has already demonstrated that she will need it an upcoming adoption day next week. Drama Boy even cries when we take the other kids out to dinner while he is visiting his grandma.

And on the bright side, we were both pleased that no one had a major tantrum and no one called us ugly names which is how we celebrated the past few years. The girls not only wished us happy birthday, they also helped us clean the house before our family came for dinner. Lucky got Ana a card. One of the girls put up some streamers and gave us each a key keepsake on a shoelace (which we wore all day and I plan to wear on birthdays and new year's from now on). I bought a mix and the girls made and decorated a cake. That's more than any of our kids have ever done for us and was entirely sweet of them.

Ahead: The Boss, Lucky, and Drama Boy all have December birthdays. Since DB particularly dislikes the other two we'll be bracing ourselves for plenty of nastiness and bad attitude on their days.