The meaning of birthdays
Abi’s 7th month birthday led Mommy to ponder the meaning of birthdays. Â Why do we wish people “happy birthday” on the anniversary of their birth? Â Shouldn’t, instead, we wish their mommies “happy birth day” . . .and if the mommy happens to be Grandma Linda, also thank her for making Daddy the wonderful person that he is? Â Certainly, it is the mommies who do the hard work on birth days. Â (Unless, of course, we are discussing me – in which case I can honestly say “it wasn’t that bad.”) Â While some people may argue that birth is traumatic to babies, I am not sure I buy that. Â Abi seemed quite content when she was born, and enjoyed holding onto Daddy’s finger. Â In any case, I do not know anyone who really remembers their birth, so no one can really dispute me. From now on, I am going to be wishing peoples’ mommies happy birthdays – rather than wishing the person who was born a happy day on the basis that they successfully made another full rotation around the sun.
p.s. if you want to wish Daddy happy birthday for Abigail, your two options are: (a) June 15th – the anniversary of her conception, and (b) March 16th  the day that Abi was born and the anniversary of the day since when Daddy has been getting much, much less sleep than he needs.
What a thoughtful entry! I guess I think of birthdays as a way to celebrate having the people we love in our lives. You know I believe in celebrating the things in our lives that we have to celebrate. So I vote for having even more celebrations – let’s celebrate Mommy and Daddy and baby.
Celebrating having the people we love in our lives – I like that.
Daddy is concerned that people will think, based on this post, that he is whining about his lack of sleep. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Daddy does a full day at the office, and then comes to relieve Mommy every single night. Please encourage Daddy to take more downtime, because he really needs it (in Mommy’s opinion, Daddy doesn’t agree.)