Reflecting on Numbers

Whenever Memorial Day is on the very near horizon, I always sigh with relief. I have survived the crowded birthday marathon in my family, with a little money left in the bank and a few party-free weekends in the future. Bobby turned 3 close to a month ago. I jumped to 27 a week after his birthday. The weekend of my own birthday, wiped out from planning Bobby's party and stretching my budget to accomodate three other birthdays in between, I had a bit of an internal meltdown.

About the number 27. I declared with feigned enthusiasm that this would be my lucky year. 27 seems a solid, lucky number. This would be the year I finish and even sell my first novel. This will be the year I get some relief fromt the around the clock toddler care when Bobby will start preschool. This will be the year I'll find regular freelance work and start pumping money back into our dwindling savings. That was all the outward declarations.

Inside, it went more like this, when I stumbled to the computer before Desperate Housewives came on and my friend Melissa saved me from my birthday night misery after my family was asleep:

#27 Musings

Happy friggin birthday, Kelly. I turned 27 at around 6am this morning, while Bobby woke up too early with a mind numbing scream and it was physically impossible to burrow any deeper into my need to be washed pillow.

27 years old. What does a number mean, anyway? Now, I am just three stair steps away from the big 30th birthday, which I’m sure will be overhyped and under rated as any other birthday I’ve celebrated...besides my 21st, which I’d be happy to revisit year after year.

So this is another one of those inconsequential years that have flown by. No huge accomplishments or big to dos. Scary to me that my own mother was still childless at this age. She didn’t have me until she was 28. What did she do with all of that time, anyway? Dinners out with friends, and movies and barbeques and other get togethers that take on a whole different shade when looking through the bleary lenses of motherhood.

Yikes! What a miserable, measly rant reeking of cheap beer and self pity. I can't even remember, really, why I was so down. Vaguely, it had to do with the fact I couldn't really sleep in on my real birthday, at no fault of my husband's...exactly. He rolled out of bed, grouchy and mumbling, to take boy duty that morning. Then Bobby proceeded to scream on the other side of my bedroom door for the next two hours.

And we did go to the Wine Festival that afternoon with the boys and their public meltdown was quite tame compared to other doozies when I only had my own set of hands to wrangle them back into the cave of our home. Is it that I'm that much closer to being 30? Age isn't that remarkable to me. My husband, my friends are all older than me. Maybe part of it is I haven't been bringing home a paycheck for three years now since deciding to stay home with my boys. (Not counting those paychecks we are saving by not putting the boys in childcare).

And now Bobby is 3. Which is what I really sat down to write about. Instead, I'm diving into my quarter life crisis, as John Mayer calls it.

Three is a supercharged age in the early childhood arena. Mostly concerning the big P words. As in potty training. As in preschool. As in, the only preschool I can afford for Bobby only takes kids that are Potty trained. And Bobby needs to be in preschool. He needs some buddies his age. He has friends, which are really my friends' kids that live out of town. But, no playdate buddies. No friends from class that invite him to birthday parties and days at the park.

Don't get me wrong. I used to pack both the boys up for a mommy and me class once a week. We actually went for about a year, until Shane learned how to run and usually headed the opposite direction of Bobby. After one hideous incident at the park after class, I had to carry one boy under each arm, both kicking and screaming, with as much dignity as I could muster while juggling two screamers and an overstuffed diaper bag. We haven't been back since.