My dear friend Susan, knower of many things, informed me recently that half-ages are the toughest. When this fact became known to me, I filed it away thinking my kids (both with summer birthdays) seemed to be doing just fine. Here is what happens when one doubts strong empirical evidence: the gods of such things swoop down with a menacing wrath and rip apart the fabric of the infidel's life.
Two cases in point: yesterday after a long day of pre-school, Julia bounced in the door bubbling over with talk about her day, how happy she was to see me, laughter and joy. After about 3 minutes of this bliss, she demanded the bottom part of a yellow-and-white checked, size 12 month bikini swim suit she hasn't worn in 2 years. I had long since forgotten about his particular article of clothing and if we even still possess it, it is buried deep, deep in the dark recesses of our storage room where it has been hiding all this time. For the life of me, I can't figure out how she even remembered that this swim suit existed! So I laid out the facts: I didn't know where it was and didn't have time to search. It was then I learned that finding and wearing this particular piece of polyester gingham was critical to Julia's very survival. The heartrending screams and tears lasted for a good half-hour. Julia is ordinarily such an even keeled kid that this tantrum kind of threw us for a loop. We didn't have much experience in these matters but have had lots of prep time to run our emergency tantrum drills. We followed our plan flawlessly (I'm proud to report!)--we wrapped her in a blanket, put her in our bed (a favorite place), kissed her sweaty brow and told her to let us know when she had cried it all out. Then proceeded to eat dinner thinking we had just experienced a strange but isolated incident.
Till this morning. I don't even know what set off this morning's rant but we got started bright and early with the same deal. This time, Mimi decided to join in just for fun. All while I'm trying to get Julia off to pre-school. It took lots of self-talk ("stay calm, don't yell, breathe, breathe, breathe, this will soon be over...") to keep moving but I finally managed to get the whining troops out the door. I was so happy to be leaving our house of misery that it didn't even matter that I hadn't brushed my hair or teeth. I figured there would be plenty of time for that later on after I had my own crying session. That's when I remembered that I have a summer birthday, too. No wonder!
By the way, Mark has a summer birthday as well but, being a calm and well regulated person by nature, seems to be mostly immune to the half-year blues.
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