Straight from Mary's Mouth

Mary: Were you happy that you had a girl first?
Me: Of course, but you know we thought you would be named Gracie for a long time.
Mary: WHy did you name me Mary?
Me: After my mom died, I wanted to name you after her, so we named you after her,and your other Grandma, and Aunt Assie.
PAUSE
Mary: Oh I thought you took one look at me and said, "She is much too beautiful to be a Gracie...we shall call her Mary!"

Guess we don't have to work on boosting her self-esteem!

Middle Child Blues!

Poor Jack-Jack! As the middle child, I spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about what Jack does or does not get. If you have ever been to my house you will quickly see that Mary has a no less than 10 times the amount of professional pictures. Visitors lament that poor Jack has no professional pictures, they think it is all a product of his birth order. They have no idea how horriffic it is to take Jack to get his picture taken. The few pictures we have purchased, have been when a particularly skilled photographer has taken enough pictures to get at least one where he looks as though he is smiling, although in reality he is simply stretching his face muscles preparing for another round of screaming.

But my poor neglected middle child has had a particularly bad week! It all started last Saturday when Greg decided they "boys" would go for haircuts. Greg did not go into details, but they both came back shaggy, and I could tell Jack had been screaming. I went out to Walmart and bought some hair clippers. It would save money, and save us the embarrasment of taking Jack out for another haircut. My mom cut my dad's hair for decades, and it always looked great (maybe not great, but not bad). Greg went first, and I must say I was pretty impressed with myself. Perhaps I had missed my calling! Next up- Jack. MaryAlice held him down and I began. After taking off a huge chunk right above his forehead, I immediatley realized I had chosen the wrong guard. We finished, and in short, Jack looks like an idiot. It took a few days for me to be able to look at him without laughing. And I have no one to blame but myself!

Just when I was getting used to his hideous haircut, Jack got dealt his second blow of the week. Wednesday night Mary and I went to Kroger where Mary picked out a coloring book for herself and a packet of stickers for Jack. Thursday morning Mary somehow convinced Jack that it would be fun to cover him in his stickers. I told him it was not a good idea, but Mary had worked her magic. I could hear Jack saying, "more stickers please Ya-Ya!" By the time they were done he was literally covered head to toe in stickers. It was cute and funny, until he decided he wanted them to come off. Teh first twenty or something was no big deal, but it slowly became more painful. And here we are almost 48 hours early and he still has about 30 stickers on his head and face. Maybe tomorrow they will finally come off. The best part was all day if he would do something wrong, I would peel a sticker off his face. Somehow it seemed better that yelling or smacking his face, but it always stopped the negative behavior.

On the bright side, next week has to be better for poor middle child!