Keep writing…Keep writing…
Had some fun with the kiddos today coloring Easter eggs. Minimal breakage, and just one minor battle when Cadence apparently looked at one of Henry’s eggs wrong and he felt the need to give her a jab in the ribs.
Bring on the Easter Bunny.
Just a normal evening in the Romano house…
Growing up, I got a lot of the classic “younger sister” treatment, which basically means that my older sister Lindy barely tolerated me most of the time and picked on me the rest. We were only 1 year and 16 days apart, but we may as well have lived on totally different planets. And it only got worse when we got together with our cousins Tonya and Shelly.
Lindy and Shelly were practically the same age, Tonya just a few years older. And whenever we gathered for a holiday or family vacation with the cousins, they would always run off like the Three Amigos, while I tagged along behind. They still laugh about the Easter they all woke up early and hunted all the eggs before I even woke up, or the time Tonya and Shelly came to visit us in Bird City and they talked me into putting on an old black cat Halloween costume and then painted my face with some of Mom’s old lipstick and blue eye shadow. And there are dozens of photos from our summers at Grandma and Grandpa’s cabin at Johnson Lake with the three of them huddled together and smiling brightly at the camera, their blonde hair shining in the sun, while I stood off to the side, my brown hair and skin making me look more than just a little out of place.
When I was 22, I reunited with my birthfamily, and overnight, I went from being just the youngest of 2 children to being the oldest of 7 (or 11 if you want to count my step-siblings). So now, I sit in 2nd place in my big blended family of 13 children.
I double-dog-dare any of those birth order theorists to take me on as a case study.
These days my family is…well…unique is probably the best way to describe it, and I have to say, I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
My poor hubby though. He married a girl that gave him three sets of in-laws.
Now that we have Henry in our lives, Stevie and I are both waiting to see how the relationship develops between our children. Right now, they’re pretty much fascinated with each other. Our guess is that will start to wear off right around the time Henry is mobile enough to start messing with Cadence’s stuff. Until then, they’re just adorable together.
And when Cadence bounced down the stairs this morning and saw what Cosette had done with Leo, I thought I might have caught a little glimpse of the wheels starting to turn.
Any bets on how long it will be before Cadence tries to gift wrap Henry?
Who’s that over there? That handsome young lad in the water, swimming a 500-meter race like it’s nothing?
Yeah, that’s my baby brother Collin. It’s his first year on the school swim team (he’s swam on a couple summer leagues, but that’s about it) and he’s OWNING that 500-meter race like he’s part fish.
500 meters. That’s 20 laps, people. 20 freakin’ laps. All at once. No stopping in the middle of the pool to drown or catch your breath or holler at the lifeguard to please toss a life preserver and haul your sorry ass out of the pool.
And that wasn’t even his first or last race of the day. Less than 5 minutes after finishing, Collin swam a leg in a relay. This kid is a swimming machine.
You go bro’!
Okay, so I know I’ve already devoted several blogs to the fact that my sister, Lindy, and I have apparently given birth to our very own clones, and I hate to keep rehashing it, but I just can’t help myself. Every time I see Odin and Cadence together or look through pictures of the two of them together, I get a little dizzy and start feeling like maybe I’m on a bad acid trip. Okay, so I’ve never done acid, but I was given a pretty hefty mixture of demorol and codeine when I was hospitalized for mono my sophomore year of high school, and sometimes I get that same sort of dreamy, rollercoaster, can’t quite remember my own name feeling when I look at our children. Seeing our kids together is a bit like stepping into the Twilight Zone, or taking a ride in the Delorean with dear old Doc Brown. It takes me back to the future…or the past…or…you know what I mean.
So tonight I was scrolling through some photos on my phone, and I ran across a couple that I snapped earlier this month when Odin came over to celebrate his birthday. Seeing them sent me on a mission through some of the old childhood photos of Lindy and I that I’d scanned onto the computer, and I couldn’t help but post a few that I found that illustrate my point. Please indulge me as I share.
I hope Brenda and Kathy will forgive me for posting so many old photos of them, but I can’t help it. Blame our parents for hanging out so often and taking so many photos! If memory serves, this is a birthday photo circa 1983…
And here are Odin and Cadence, circa 2011…
And again, Lindy and Lori, I believe this is 1982 or 1983…
And Odin and Cadence, 2011. I apologize for the fuzziness, but the little buggers wouldn’t stop moving and, well, camera phones stink.
Now, if you really want to have some mind-boggling fun, you’ll take a look back through some of the photo albums on my birthmother, Momma Dawn’s side. I have a seriously eerie lookalike photo of her when she was around 7, but it’s still packed in a box somewhere, so we’ll have to do make do with these. Here is Momma Dawn, circa 19??. (No way am I filling in the year! I’m going to visit her in a few weeks and I don’t want to her to strangle me for blasting her age all over the internet).
And here I am in 1996. Mmmm…cake!
The best though is when my husband starts looking through the photos from my childhood. Inevitably, he always hits a few that make him stop and do a doubletake and yell loudly, “Damn, look at this one! It’s Beau in a dress!”
That would be my little brother Beau. In fact, the first thing Steven said to me when our daughter was born was, “Oh my God! She looks just like Beau!” And boy was he right! Not only is Cadence my little Mini-Me, I also see so much of my brother when I look at her, especially when she’s making her cheesy smile faces or sticking out her pouty lip. Here’s a photo of Beau and me, taken in 2003…
And one of me, Lindy, Tonya and Shelly at Grandma and Grandpa’s cabin around 1984-85. (Please take a moment to take a good look at the face Shelly is making in the background. It cracks me up every time). Now, this photo isn’t exactly Beau-in-a-dress, but I am sporting a Strawberry Shortcake outfit, so you get the idea.
So, there is no real point to tonight’s blog post, other than me just having fun going through some old photos and sharing a few that blew my mind. Thank you for indulging me!
Lori Romano 