Happy Bedroom to You

My baby girl's birthday is Monday. She'll be 13. I truly can't believe it. I vividly remember her birth, which with the passing of time has gone from looking like an episode of ER in my mind to a messy episode of I Love Lucy. From the fact that the epidural fell out of my back to me answering a phone call from a wrong number while in hard labor, it's gotten much funnier as we both age.

I was 19 and single when I found out I was pregnant. During the pregnancy, I pretended that her biological father was actually gonna stick around, but we all knew better. I remember leaning over her while changing her in the hospital and just looking at this gorgeous little girl and wondering if we were tough enough to make it on our own. I looked into her blue eyes (although they turned to green like mine) and said to her, "It's just you and me against the world baby."

In some ways I was right. Her biological father was gone by the time she was about 3 months old. But we weren't alone. We had (and have) all the support in the world. My parents offered to babysit in the evenings so I took college classes some nights and, when not in class, worked. It wasn't long till I met Not-So-Ex and our own little family was born.

During the divorce, I felt like I had lost my family and, in a lot of ways, I had. Since rebuilding the strength of both our own little family and my larger family as well, I'm constantly reminded of just how much support I have. Like when we decided to buy this home and mentioned our lack of furniture, my mom was full of ideas. She knew one family member was giving away furniture because she wanted to clear out her storage and she offered her own dining room table and china cabinet to me, which was a huge offer since Mom always has beautiful furniture.

Of course the biggest thing was her offer to buy both the kids bedroom suites for their birthdays since they currently have almost no furniture to speak of and share one room. Right now the two of us have been window shopping like mad to fix up the perfect room for a teenager. But I still got quite a giggle, as did my daughter, out of the birthday card they left for her yesterday. Inside it read "Happy bedroom to you, happy bedroom to you, happy bedroom dear Rena, happy bedroom to you." Apparently I actually DID inherit some of my goofiness from my mom. Here I had always thought it was Dad's fault! LOL