I have three children. Of course, they aren't children anymore but I'm still their mother and I gave birth to all three of them. I've never considered myself a typical parent but I guess I am. I took great care with our first child to maintain her baby book. We took tons of pictures of our first child. Then our second child came along and I tried to maintain her baby book and I think I did pretty good. We took 1/2 a ton of pictures of our second child. Then after seven years, our third child came along and I did buy a baby book and I did try to maintain it. We did take pictures of our third child but not nearly 1/4 ton of them. It's not that we didn't care. It's that there wasn't enough of the two of us (HTP and myself)to spread ourselves thin enough to take care of anything but the basics by that time. Believe me, there are plenty of basics that three children need and demand. I don't have a clue how people who have more then three children manage. All I can say is that it's a good thing that I only had three children because four might have pushed me over the edge.

Anyway, I told you all that because it reflects on other aspects of our life. It came to my attention yesterday that I'd never taken my third child out to pick strawberries. He'd never even seen a strawberry in it's natural state. On a strawberry plant in a strawberry field. Surely this couldn't be the case! Sigh. I'm an awful parent. Yet again I find something that I did with my first two children that I didn't find time to do with my third child. I bet he doesn't remember going to see Old Faithful either or Washington D.C. Oh well...we took him to see Disney World and the other two couldn't go because they had already flown the nest. He's seen New York..New York and the Eiffel Tower (both in Las Vegas) too. I bet he's done lots of things that the first two didn't because they flew the nest. I've got lots of pictures of the third child now too. We took pictures of him picking strawberries for the first time yesterday.

The reality of life is that only the first and the last child in a family receive Mom and Dad's undivided attention. Middle children have to learn to share. The last child receives a parents' attention at a time when they would probably prefer a little more negligence. Parents do the best they can. I hope I didn't screw things up too badly for any of my three children.

Murphyism of the Day

The number of photographs one takes of their children decreases as the number of children in the family increases.

Shirt never hits the fan at a convenient time.

Small children never can pronounce the word "truck" and will always wait to show off their mispronunciation until the most embarrassing moments.