Happy Birthday Franny!

My Mom used to always call me on Franny's birthday and say, "Happy Mother's Day! This is your very own personal Mother's Day because it's the day you became a mother."

I was just sitting here thinking about the night we brought her home from the hospital. My parents and siblings arrived just before we were discharged and they came home with us. My parents were going to spend the night at my grandparents, but I guess they couldn't manage to pull away from their first granddaughter, because my Dad sat in Bobby's chair all night holding Franny. I kept waking up expecting that she would need to be fed- finally at about 2 or 3 in the morning, I walked downstairs and found my new baby, curled up in my Dad's arms and sleeping soundly. That kiddo has always loved her sleep. Tonight we were watching American Idol and fifteen minutes before bedtime she said, "Mom? I want to go to bed."

My mom used to talk about how I was her little buddy when I was Franny's age. She'd talk about how much she loved to be with me and listening to music with me in the car and taking me with her on errands. I know exactly what she was talking about now because I have that with Franny. I can only hope that I'll feel this strong connection with all my children as they start to get a little older and their distinctive personalities emerge, but I just know that Franny and I are going to be great friends.

I've learned so much from Franny. I've been trying to teach Franny for a while now that there are certain words I can say that she cannot. Some examples of these words are: sucks, stupid, Dang it!, Shoot!, What the crap?! Franny's been trying to teach me, in her own way, that if she can't say those words, then maybe Mommy shouldn't be either. Hmmm... she makes a good point. I'm working on it, and she's being very patient with me.

Franny loves to sing, and she's getting better. For a while there, we thought maybe she was going to take after me with her musical abilities. That would be very unfortunate. Check out her latest performance:

This year Franny wanted a Spidergirl birthday party. Most people don't even know there is a Spidergirl. As you can probably imagine, it's virtually impossible to find any Spidergirl party supplies. To further complicate my dilemna, Franny insists that our Spidergirl be the preschool version, with pigtails, like the figurine in her 3D memory game. (Which by the way is the only reason she knows who Spidergirl is in the first place.) I had to add pigtails to the only Spidergirl picture I could find. Jayne laughed when she saw the invitation and observed: "she's got boobs and pigtails!" She told me to post it on my blog, so here you go:

I had a very long list of kids I wanted to invite, and it kills me that we had to shave it down so much, but I wanted to keep it as close to 5 or 6 as possible. So we worked together and came up with a list of kids mostly from her classes at school. She is very excited. Me, too.

Happy Birthday, my sweet Franny.