WHO'S GETTING OLD?????

My daughter Tammy was FIFTY years old this past Wednesday. She was a tad upset over it...and I thought...you should be me, honey!

On Monday her daughters took her out for lunch to Olive Garden and I tagged along. Then on Wednesday Joe and I took her to Red Lobster for lunch. Her kids bought her a new couch...at least they gave her a card with a picture of a couch. They've picked out one at Big Lots ...now they just have to pay for it and pick it up.

It doesn't seem possible that it's been 50 years since she was born. I remember that day like it was yesterday. Mark and I were only 19...and we were equally scared and excited. He was so excited he called his mother...and shouted in the phone "I'm a Dad...I'm a Dad" and then hung up without even telling her anything about the baby!

Being the oldest of eight kids, I was pretty knowledgeable about how to take care of a baby...so I wasn't worried about that. But I was so in awe of her, I used to hang over her crib just watching her sleep. Mark would too. If she stretched, we would oooh and aaaah...yelling for the other one to come look. Mark was determined to be a hands-on dad...very unusual for a man in those days....and took great joy and pride in changing her diaper....until he had to changed a very messy one....he took one look at that dirty diaper and promptly threw up...barely missing the baby! From then on, before he'd change her, he'd pick her up and smell her bottom. If he smelled anything, he'd hand her to me to change.

A couple of day after we brought her home, Mark was making up her formula...well...I had made it and put it on to boil. We didn't have instant formula back then. We mixed up Carnation milk, corn sugar and water...poured it in previousely sterilized bottles...and then had to "cook" the filled bottles in boiling water for 30 minutes. Well, Tammy was hungry and Mark took the boiling hot bottle and held it under cold running water....and it exploded! He got a piece of glass in his eye. We didn't have a car, so I ran upstairs to a friend...and asked him to drive us to the ER. At the ER, while the docs are working on Mark, a nurse came up to me...and said why are you bleeding so hard? I looked down and there was a pool of blood at my feet. So they put me on a table in the same room...and discovered I had torn my stitches so bad they had to restitch me. Ouch...ouch...ouch! Mark had to wear a "pirate's patch" over his eye for a couple of weeks...but it was fine, eventually.

I've always said its the Mother who deserves the birthday cards....giving birth is such a miracle...and so much work for the mother...she should celebrate the day every year!