It's our 18 year wedding anniversary today. And it was eldest daughter's 14th birthday yesterday. Both numbers, when I ponder upon them, are making me feel just slightly old - though I know there are many of a similar age who have a few years on us on both counts! I was 26 and he was 24 when we married. Funny how I was starting to notice my age by then (*tick tick tick* went the body clock) and yet it has often been remarked that 24 was quite young for him to marry. "What were you thinking?!" was one comment to him at a school reunion.

I look back on our wedding photos, and the ones of us with the firstborn, and, wow... didn't we look young back then?! Funny that. However! It's of no use to dwell on the aging process (or the effect of children upon our lives).... I daresay we would have aged anyway!

It's a bit hard to forget our anniversary, when it's the day after Madam's birthday, but when I rolled over in bed this morning and said "hmmm... Happy Anniversary", he said... "Ooh! I forgot!" Given he'd barely opened his eyes, I'll let him off that one.

"So did you get me a present?" he joshed.

"You just got a new bike!" I grinned. I did too, so we are square. We are like that with birthdays, christmas and anniversaries and everything. And we've continued to use the anniversary excuse today by ordering a pile of 'cool weather' cycling gear online. Lucky we had an anniversary, right now, otherwise we'd be cold riding our bikes through winter!! We have ordered some matching shirts. (As you do when you ride a tandem.) All together now... "Awwww."

We are having a quiet day. A sleep in - ahhh! Appreciated after our 5 am start yesterday to go bike riding. (48km on the tandem.) He is tinkering with bikes - actually, fixing up my old mountain bike so that the older girls have a viable bike to ride around, now that they have grown out of their kid bikes. They are not keen enough on solo riding at this stage to warrant new bikes, although if they were, we would no doubt add to the growing collection in the shed.

The Birthday Girl is in town with three friends, seeing Pirates of the Caribbean 3 as her birthday treat - a treat she only just won back after "losing it" on Friday night due to Attitude. At the moment I feel like this Parenting of a Teenager gig is much like breaking in a wild horse - with this one being a very frisky, wilful one indeed. I'm sure she is going to do our heads in more than the other two put together. She lost her party last year.. due to Attitude... and I was reluctant to be so horrible a mother to do it two years running. She is now on what you might call 'double (not-so) secret probation'... or 'zero tolerance'.. 'no strikes and you're out' - you get the picture - in regard to the way she speaks to us when we have issues with her behaviour. In the scheme of things she is probably not so bad, but if we let it run in the direction she's taking it.. well... don't like to think where it will all end up.

So, with a 'fresh start', we hope, I gave her something she's been SOOOO wanting - a mobile phone. Cheapest pre-paid model I could get... I must admit it's a bit of a present for me as well, because, as other parents will attest, it is your lifeline, your contact, at that stage in their lives where you have to let them out independently. I wonder how our parents coped in pre-mobile phone days. How much harder would it have been to let us loose with a bunch of girlfriends...?

If nothing else, confiscation of the phone will be an excellent threat hanging over her pretty head.

So, now that I've frittered away my day somehow (four loads of washing on the line).. I now have to drive back into town to pick them up. Last night Middle Child went on that sleepover I wasn't keen about .. and has disappeared this afternoon to a friend's place. As she apparently didn't get to sleep before 1am, I am anticipating some sort of fallout this evening, at which point I will be able to say "I told you so" about the whole sleepover thing.

I've also just remembered that I need to do a nit check on youngest's head tonight... arrrgh.

At any rate, for many reasons, a glass of wine will be in order tonight!

Labels: birthdays, daily, parenting