Oh, what a night...

Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Tell us about the day you were born.

I kinda wish I could have had my mom do a guest post, for obvious reasons, but I'll do my best. I've certainly heard the story of my birth plenty of times, but I think it would be better hearing it straight from the horse's mouth.

First, let me tell you that I was VERY late. "Back in the day," they let women go past their due dates, and in some cases (mine!) WAY past their due dates. I was due to be born sometime around the first week of April. My daddy was kind of hoping I'd be a couple days late so I would be born on his birthday (April 11). Well, as you all know (*snicker*), my birthday is May 8. I know!! A month after I was due to enter the world. WTF, right?!

Now, before you start crackin' wise, and saying that the due date was just miscalculated, it wasn't. My parents know exactly when I was conceived. Right after my mom got pregnant, my paternal grandfather passed away, so my dad went back to Italy for about a month. So, no, there's no chance that I was conceived later than they thought.

My parents tried all kinds of things to get me to finally come out and meet them. Their favorite was driving up and down the rough, bumpy streets of Chicago (there were still some 'back streets' then that were pretty awful) at high speeds, hoping to bounce me right out of there. Yeah...not so much.

My mom always loves to tell the story about the day before I was born. She says I was incredibly active that day. According to her, I was trying to come out her belly button. She says I exhausted her with my acrobatics all day, so she tried to go to bed early. But, when she tried to lie down, she said it seemed like I was trying to stand straight up. She says I was literally lifting her off the bed. (Keep in mind that my mother has always been a tiny little thing. She weighed 95 lbs on her wedding day. The day she had me, she weighed in at a whopping 110!) My dad spent most of the night trying to hold me down, with BOTH hands, so my mother could try to sleep a little. He even fell asleep that way.

Very early the next morning, my mom woke up because she had to pee. When she got up, she realized her nightgown was wet, but padded to the bathroom anyway, thinking she peed the bed. When she got to the bathroom, she turned on the light, and saw that her entire nightgown was soaked with blood. She went back to the bedroom and flipped the light on, and says it looked like a murder scene. All my jumping around the night before must have really shredded her insides.

Enough with the gore. I'm making myself queasy. I was my mom's biggest baby, weighing in at 6 lbs 15 oz. She brought me home on Mother's Day. Perfect, huh? And, I've been perfect ever since - NOT!!

I AM perfectly nuts and obsessed with one thing. Come on, say it with me....PENGUINS! Just because I love you guys so much, I took a picture for you today to share how crazy I am. THIS is what I saw when I threw my covers back this morning:Ok, stop laughing. I've decided to do a whole series of photos for you of all the different combinations of this set up I can come up with. I have a couple of other pairs of penguin pajamas. I just bought myself a new pair of fleecy penguin pajama pants at the freakin' grocery store the other day (hey, they were on clearance! How could I possibly say no?). I have several more sets of flannel penguin sheets, and a couple more pairs of penguin socks. Alright already, enough with the laughing!! You know you can't wait to see the pictures.

Finally tonight, at the request of a fellow teacher blogger, I want to share this link to a post on Miss Elphaba's blog about the movie "School of Life." Based on the clips she's posted, I'm going to search this out. And, hey, Julie, it stars Ryan Reynolds!! (although, being his girlfriend and all, you probably already know that, huh?)