My Own (Anti)Oscar, Presented by My Teen

While the eyes of many were focused on who was winning an Oscar for Best Whatever last night, I swept my own category hands down.

I am apparently the World's Worst Mom.

How innocently we do things for our children when they are small, endeavoring to make their lives fun and meaningful and full of special times. Then as they grow up and life gets busy, we put away childish things, not realizing that they view them as Traditions Etched in Stone.

Because it's such a big deal to a preschooler to reach the milestone of being, say, 3 and a half, I used to celebrate it. I would make my kids half of a cake, put the current number of candles plus half of a candle on it, and we would sing Happy Half-Birthday to You. No gifts (or half-gifts) were involved, and since their birthdays are 12 days apart, it was a piece of cake (so to speak!) to do it. I'd make a whole recipe of our traditional chocolate cake, pop one layer in the freezer for the next 1/2 birthday, and cut, stack, and frost the other one for the first child's half-birthday.

And since all 4 of our birthdays are clumped together in just over a month, it brought some fun to the other half of the year. Of course, my man and I don't care to commemorate such half-milestones for ourselves; the whole birthdays come fast enough as it is! But it was a sweet family time when the kids were young and we continued through elementary school.

I really thought my kids were past this stage, as a couple of years ago both of their half-birthdays came and went without any of us realizing it. What a fool naive woman I was!

But alas, yesterday, my girl remembered hers. And in spite of the fact that we were home a whopping 10 minutes between 9 AM and 8 PM, she bemoaned the fact that she didn't have her 1/2 cake. She was marginally placated with a wrap & a slush from Sonic.

Maybe I should have given them a wretched, miserable childhood so they wouldn't have such high expectations!

Beware, young moms: it all comes back to bite you when they're teenagers!