to convince Kinsley she should request the same for her birthday, so they can have it twice. Kinsley listens with rapt attention, eyes wide while chewing on a banana slice.
“I get to choose on my birthday,” she informs him when he’s finished, unruffled by the sales pitch for jelly ice cream. She’s headstrong, my girl. “I’m asking for jelly waffles.” Then they high-five each other to celebrate their conspiratorial overthrow of their parental jelly-rationing government.
I wipe Amelia’s hand clean of a banana slice she’s squished into oblivion and wonder how time flies so fast. I’m sure it was just last week my babies were this tiny, now they’re halfway to teenage-hood and conspiring against me. Humph.
Oh, wait… do I have baby fever? I’ve never really experienced baby fever before so I’m unsure. I’ve never had a chance to yearn for a baby, since I got pregnant with Kellan before I’d really considered motherhood and then Kinsley immediately followed in the way that babies do when you have a lot of sex and aren’t very careful.
We decided to be more careful after Kinsley—obviously, since we only have the two. But maybe it’s time to revisit the subject. We do have all these bedrooms, after all…
The doorbell rings again and Kinsley takes off. I don’t chase her because I can see the front door and Kyle’s got it. It’s the inflatable bouncy house from for the party tomorrow. Yeah, yeah. We’re those parents. But it’s not like we’re putting up a circus tent in the backyard and bringing in farm animals. Just the bouncy house. And finger-painting. And a dinosaur excavation station. And face-painting. But that’s it. Really. Besides the bubble station and the unicorn headband crafting area.
And yes, maybe two cakes is a bit of overkill, but they can’t help having birthdays so close and it’s not like they’d pick the same cake. A three-tiered unicorn cake for Kinsley and one shaped like a dinosaur for Kellan. It occurs to me now that Kellan asked for strawberry jam filling in his cake. Kinsley asked for rainbow sprinkle filling.
Fine. It’s all me. I just really adore celebrating their birthdays. It doesn’t feel like that long ago I thought I was going to be a single mother and here I am, a happily married mother of two. So I go a little overboard.
Which reminds me. I’ve left Kerrigan assembling the party favor bags in my office. I wipe Amelia’s face and make sure she’s not hiding any chunky bits of banana anywhere, then carry her to my office. My office is a dream and part of why I said yes to this house. It’s located next to the kitchen and has vaulted ceilings and French doors along the back wall overlooking the yard and pool. The kids aren’t old enough yet to play outside unsupervised, but I’ll be able to watch them from here when they are.
My office gets a lot of use because I still run my blogging businesses. Both of them. The travel site is mostly freelance writers I hire for new content, but I do a bit of those posts as well. But hiring freelancers has allowed me to expand my reach. For example, instead of one post about London from a singles’ point of view, I have content about Paris for families, Paris for couples, Paris on your own. I’ve focused on the cities I love most and then ensured there’s a relevant post for everyone.
My other blog is a mommy blog. I produce content targeting moms, focusing on pregnancy, parenting, recipes, activities, and a whole lot of fun parenthood memes. I now average a million monthly visitors to that site, which is a really big deal. The site requires so much new content I have two part-time employees who help me manage it and it just keeps growing. I’ve had some offers to sell the site, but I’m not interested. Not yet. I have more I want to do with it first.
“These party favors are super elaborate,” Kerrigan muses as she stuffs a dinosaur tote bag with an assortment of goodies and then ties a ribbon to the handles before placing it on the growing pile of favor bags piling up on the sofa in my office.
“Err,” I hedge. Sure, the personalized tote bags I ordered on Etsy with each child’s name embroidered on it are a bit much. Maybe. But handy, am I right? Now if anyone accidentally leaves without a favor bag, I’ll know exactly who