Mirror, Mirror...my eldest child

Tomorrow is Larry Potter's birthday. Not that he'd let me forget. Or anyone else. He's been counting down since February.

Here's an excerpt from a previous blog about that day. I changed the years to represent, well, that he's eight now and not six.:
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Eight years ago right now, I was in labor in a room at Meriter Hospital in Madison. My water had broken the night before at about 8:45 p.m. in the parking lot and I went to maternity triage. I called Disgruntled Husband once I got there to tell him I was staying this time, and he got off work to come down. I remember being anxious and frustrated at the same time. I had been to the hospital three times before thinking I was in labor, and this time, I really was but the nurses had to verify my water had broken. Um, does the trail of water behind me or the soaked shorts and sandals confirm it for you? I know some women think their water has broken when they have only peed on themselves, but anyone who's been pregnant knows that the average full-term pregnant bladder only holds about a dropper-full of pee. After much conversation between nurses about "ferning," they let me stay.


I got to my room about midnight. DH went back to our apartment to get some things of his own and brought up mine when he got back. I called Stoo, my best friend who was also a labor and delivery nurse in Chicago (incidentally, the one who told me I was probably leaking fluid and should get to the hospital). She came up about noon.

It was a long labor, so I won't bore anyone with the gory details. One of the things I remember most were the windows outside my room. The nurse started pitocin (the devil) at 6 a.m. By 10, I had strong contractions. Here I was in this beautiful, state-of-the-art room with TV, DVD, CD, VHS...and I wanted silence. I stared at those windows as a focal point.
Eight years ago, I was a very excited and scared individual. A mere 29 hours later, I had a son. I was only 23. DH and I had been married six days less than a year and we had a son.

LP was born at 2:52 a.m. I couldn't sleep at all after that. After I had gotten sewn up and cleaned up, I just stared at him. Clueless but delirious. I remember those few days at the hospital very fondly.

I've had two children since then, and each very memorable and wonderful. But the first, my first, the feeling is almost unexplainable.

He was the science experiment, the test-market baby. If this went right, maybe we'd do it again.

And now, he's in third grade. Smart as a whip. Very beautiful still. It's true what I was warned: It goes by in a flash. I'm sure in a blink, he'll be graduating high school.
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Ugh. I think the years have made me into a much more snarky individual. All I think when I read this now is how sickeningly sweet that passage is. Now don't get wrong, I love my son and still have those feelings, but sometimes the reality of the day and the individual sometimes make voicing all of those feelings feel a little laughable.

Yes, LP will be eight tomorrow. Eight. Like in 10 years, he'll be in college. I don't know whether to tie him up or mark down the days. Eight is like that. My dad once said that there's nothing worse than a 9-year-old boy...so, does that mean it's going to get even worse?

I am convinced it's not just my son...at least in this capacity. Many of his friends are in that same know-it-all-eye-rolling-testing-the-boundaries stage of life. It's awesome.

Now, LP has a real disadvantage to his life: DH and me. Because as my step-sister once said about her own son, "He's either got the best or worst qualities of us both, depending on your point of view." Yeah, he's mouthy and opinionated and argumentative, and I can only blame so much of that on the age. Genetics isn't on his side on this one.

(We determined after a pretty good tantrum that he's dramatic like I was/am and tries to negotiate and argue his way out of situation like DH did/does. It's actually kind of entertaining, but only if you're not his parents.)

As I documented in this post, LP definitely reminds me of another person I once knew, only less annoying. He's got a mouth, too. (By the way, these are things I'd say to him and he already knows and kinda is proud of all of this, so I don't want anyone thinking I'm picking on him. Like I said, he's pretty much like me and DH, so we're also okay with owning up to this.)

Some entertaining highlights from LP's life:
-at 2, calling the babysitter a dumb bitch - she was impressed he used it in the right context
-memorizing all the state capitals before he entered kindergarten
-started talking at 7 months old, but wouldn't walk until he was 16 months old. He wouldn't do it, but could recite a soliloquy as to why he chose not to walk.
-After learning about Martin Luther King, Jr. in school, he was convinced DH was an African American. True, he's not as pale as the rest of us, but somehow I don't think DH qualifies for a change in race. At least that's what my African American friends tell me.
-When he told us that our friends' daughter E was his girlfriend, and we said he wasn't old enough to have a girlfriend, he informed US that "You aren't in charge of my lovin'."
-Was once hosed off in the yard, naked, because he refused to sit down in the bathtub
-Stunned the talking turtle dude from Finding Nemo at Disney World when LP asked him how deep the Marianas Trench was.
-For awhile, he was obsessed with Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. He wanted us to be on it, and I told him that people have to be really sick or otherwise problemed to get the construction team here. A month or so later, DH had a terrible headache and had to have a shot with some strong drugs in it to get it to stop. The nurse rolled him out of the clinic in a wheelchair. LP, who was in the car waiting with the rest of us, saw this and started cheering and screaming because he thought that we could finally be on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition
-Has told me numerous times that when he's 10, we have to move to California for a year so he can be on Are you Smarter than a 5th Grader. He's dead serious

So, happy birthday to my little man tomorrow. And, as he told me yesterday, I'd better start saving up because in another 8 years, he wants his own car for his birthday. Always thinking ahead.