Let Them Eat Cake

George turned six months old yesterday, which meant time for our half birthday party tradition. I never meant to start a tradition when Luke was six months old. I simply had cabin fever. Luke had several colds back to back for three weeks. Pair that with several tornadoes in our area at the time, and I only left the house twice in those three weeks. That's two times. Twice. For groceries. I needed to do something out of the ordinary to break the monotony, so I made half of a cake and a silly party hat with a "1/2" on it, and the rest is history.

Now, twenty months later, I find myself repeating the same ritual, not because I want to, but because I have this genetic disorder passed down to me from my mother that makes me feel the need to make everything equal amongst my children. My sweet mom goes to great lengths to achieve absolute equality when it comes to my siblings (and our spouses) and me. She even makes the wrapping on our Christmas presents equal, even though we are spread across the globe. She seems to think we're all on the phone Christmas morning comparing the size and number of loops on each bow. If my mom spends Christmas Eve tossing and turning in her bed, or you see her stabbing sulkily at her beef tenderloin on Christmas night, you can bet it's because my brother asked for money this year, and there aren't as many ways to wrap up money as there are for the gifts she bought for the rest of us, and she's riddled with guilt over it. Don't worry about her, though, she'll be over it by President's Day.

So anyway, I don't want George to ever compare his and Luke's baby books and think, "Where are MY half birthday party pictures?" And please, please, please let Luke never ask me if his cake was made from scratch, because if my memory serves me right, it was from a box. I don't favor George, but his cake was from scratch.



I swear it was only his first cake--not his first Jack & Coke. Most respectable southerners wait till the baby's second birthday for such rites of passage.
Never one to be outdone, Luke dons his own party hat in the form of his bike helmet, and in his jealous rage, refuses to smile.

Now, if you're my sister, you're appalled by these pictures for several reasons. First of all, George has several pink dots on his party hat. Meredith would have gotten her ducks in a row and gotten some manlier wrapping paper. I'm lazy, so I didn't. Second of all, she's probably completely grossed out by my 25-50th percentile baby. Her son, whom she had with her 6'4" husband, is in the 95th percentile, which gives her license to boast about her milk supply and superior gene pool. (She doesn't really do that.) And third, she absolutely cannot believe I gave my baby cake. When I told her what we do for the six-month milestone, she laughed and laughed and told me what she was planning to do for her son, Jackson, when he turns six months in a couple weeks. She's going to...wait for it...the excitement is worth the suspense...okay, I'm going to tell you now...she's going to give Mr. Future Football Scholarship his FIRST FRUIT!!!! I can hardly wait for him to turn a year old so he can have his birthday dinner of bread and water. Different strokes, for different folks, I guess. Meredith is a really great and dedicated mom, though, and my nephew is even starting to crawl at five months. He's probably going to start doing his own laundry at age three and helping old ladies across the street at four.

Anyway, I'm just an amateur writer, so I don't have a tidy or clever ending to this post. I guess I'll just say, "That's all, folks!"