My sister is 40 today. It’s a milestone in our family because she’s the eldest of all us girls and I’ve been teasing her about turning 40 for the last two years.

“You know, you actually turn 40 twice, Erin. Once when you turn 39 because all you can think is OHMYGOD I’M GONNA BE 40 NEXT YEAR and then once when you truly turn 40.”

She reminded me that I’m a mere 14 months younger than she.

Guess who turns 39 this year? Yeah. That came right around and bit me in the butt, didn’t it?

Erin always got to do everything first. She got her license before I did, when she asked to go roller skating with her friends on a Saturday all by herself she got to go alone. Erin also got to make mistakes before I did so that I could watch her and tell myself that I didn’t want to make those same mistakes. (Let’s face it. I made all new ones. I wasn’t very smart.) She got married right out of high school and moved to New Mexico but came back to Illinois after her second baby.

She works harder than anyone else I know. It drives me crazy but I’ve seen her clean her house from top to bottom after working a full day and she seems to go, go, go long after any normal, rational person has lost steam. Nobody is as exacting as Erin.

She’s a crier. If anything sentimental happens, Erin will be crying. (Even though I watched as she gave birth to her third child and teared up, she gritted her teeth and pointed at me and screamed, “Don’t you dare cry right now, Kelly Marie!” because she’s also dramatic with that pointy finger of hers and likes to use both of my names when she scolds me.) The entire family has said at one time or another, “Oh, Lord. Someone get Erin a tissue because we know she’s gonna cry.” She’s a pretty crier, too. ANNOYING.

She’s an encourager. If you feel like you can’t do it she is right there telling you that you can.

She’s the first person I wanted to talk to when I found out that Maddie was back in my life and she’s the first person I will call when I think the world is crashing down upon me. All “what am I gonna do?” conversations start with my big sister. When I got a tattoo on my back she decided that she wanted one, too, and now all three of us have the same tattoos. Sometimes I like to point out that I GOT MINE FIRST but then I look at her tattoo and realize she went bigger and fancier than mine.

Happy Birthday, sister. I love you fiercely.

I know you’re crying as you read this so get a tissue, wipe your nose, and collect yourself you big baby.

Over the last two years our family has gotten used to going back and forth between parents. It’s a testament to the passing of time that I’m even able to admit such a difficult thing because I know it is not the ideal situation. More than anything I’ve learned that co-parenting sometimes results in an It is what it is sentiment because things are just beyond our control. I read with great interest how other people cope with the loss of a marriage through divorce, but I’m just not able to write about it. First of all, it would be one sided and that’s simply unfair. Secondly, I would have to permit entry into the hole that is left in my heart since my marriage failed. I failed. But it’s a mourning that others write about and explore far better than I could do justice.

Every week that my boys are with me they bring a few of their favorite clothes, a karate uniform, and a ton of DVDs. My sons are connoisseurs of films. Many years ago when they were quite young our family made the conscious decision to get rid of cable television because they were so impressionable and reality shows and sexual music videos began to get out of control in our society. Since it’s hard to monitor that we simply turned it off and started playing more board games, doing puzzles, and reading. After about four months when that wore off we visited our video store and rented all the movies in the Classics section because they were free. They watched Jimmy Stewart’s incredible performance in “Harvey” and learned nearly every line to Rosalind Russell’s “Auntie Mame” (my all time favorite movie ever) and then a friend let us borrow her Ealing Studios Collection of films starring Sir Alec Guinness.

We learned, watching the  Ealing Studio movies, that the older kids didn’t get much into British comedy. I asked them what they didn’t like about it and Mallory responded with “Nothing EVER turns out right for those characters, mom!” True. It’s uh…kind of like the thing about British comedy. They were very meh about the whole thing and might even tell you that they suffered through it. The youngest loved it. He was probably 6 at the time so it surprised me that he liked it as much as he did. We got through “The Ladykillers” and were well into “The Lavender Hill Mob” when he spoke up and said, “I know that guy. That actor. But not like this. I know his voice.”

Morgan, my youngest, is really good with voices. And he was absolutely right. He did know that voice. It belonged to Obi Wan Kenobi and we’d watched enough Star Wars movies to choke a tauntaun.

Tonight, when my boys got here, Morgan pulled out 8 movies (EIGHT MOVIES LIKE WE HAVE TIME FOR ALL THAT CRAP) that he’d brought over and I grieved the realization that he probably wants to watch all of them before he goes to bed. “Look here, buddy. We aren’t watching everything. Make a choice and pick ONE.” One of them is the second “Die Hard” movie and since it’s been a long time since I’ve seen that one I had to ask if it’s the one in the airport and on the plane. Mason chimed in that he’s noticed a theme with the Bruce Willis movies.

“Ok, so the first one he saves everyone in a building. The second one he saves everyone  in an area. The third one he saves a whole city. The fourth one he saves the whole United States. I’ll bet in the fifth one he’ll save the whole world. The sixth one he’ll save the universe. The seventh one he’ll probably save God.”

Mason sure does have a special way of summing things up. Speaking of summing things up, I don’t really have much in the way of tying this all together. But that’s how life is for me sharing kids. It’s really pretty messy. The point is, I have some great kids who are funny and who have managed to maintain a sense of humor. Even when it feels like nothing ever turns out right for us.

As an added bonus, I’ve included a very cute “sweded” version of “Die Hard” that I found just now. (Have you seen “Be Kind, Rewind”? Then you might know what sweded means. Great movie. Watch it. It’s super cute.)

Yippee-ki-yay. (I can’t write the last word of that popular phrase. I’m trying to be family friendly here. I don’t have to write it. You know it.)

This past week more than a few friends have reached out to me to ask how I feel about this new show on the CW called “Life Unexpected” and the last time this happened was when “Juno” came out. It is strange how I am the poster child in my circle for getting a measurement of whether or not movies or television shows are realistic in their portrayal of young girls placing babies for adoption. My assessment of “Juno” was that, while I enjoyed the tone of the movie, I was a little surprised by her witty, rapid-fire quips enough to be wary of a teenager using the language Juno uses. It just felt a bit too affected for me. My days are spent with teenagers. Over a thousand of them. Many of them have a sharp tongue, but none in that manner nor are they as cynical. Lots of them are very grown up and have bigger decisions on their plates than they deserve, but they don’t deal with it as caustically or as flippantly as Juno did.

That’s neither here nor there. I’m not a movie critic by any stretch of the imagination.

All I have are my own experiences and no one could possibly guide me through them no matter how badly I wanted them to when Maddie came back into my life. Who can tell me how to think through this? Can anyone please let me know what my next steps will be? Could someone please explain my feelings to me?

My friends helped, but they were as lost as I was on these important matters. It was best if they just threw up their hands and said, “I dunno, Kelly. Do your best.” and then hugged me. It was just about all I was allowing myself to take from them.

“Life Unexpected” is glossy and I don’t for one minute get how two brown eyed parents had a blue eyed child. But I had two red-haired children, so who am I to talk about the probability of an offspring’s genotype? Hell, I can’t even fill out a Punnett square correctly anymore. It’s also because Lux (the daughter of the two ridiculously attractive parents) has ridiculously perfect skin and NO TEENAGER HAS PERFECT SKIN. I’ve seen them up close. You can’t fool me. Her character is super cute and her hair is super cute and her clothes, as poor as she’s supposed to be, are super cute. But she’s a 19-year old actress trying to capture what a 15-year old girl might feel when happening upon her real parents in an effort to be an emancipated minor. It’s not that that’s not a remarkable event, but her reaction doesn’t seem very believable. (If you want to see Britt Robertson in a remarkable movie, then check her out in “Dan In Real Life” instead.)

It’s also not very believable that she would meet these beautiful, fun, successful parents and not want to be with them right away. Wouldn’t that fantasy come first in her mind? Or does she just not want to believe it? Either way, when she fights it I can’t find a way to suspend my disbelief even though I’m not supposed to do that with a drama. There’s an English Lit. degree on my wall to prove that I should know better.

Even though I’ve come to expect the unexpected (or rather, not expect anything at all) it just isn’t always so shiny and pretty. Just when I think that I have my emotions under control I will lose it. Just when I get used to having a long distance relationship with Maddie I find myself missing her or the Might Have Beens. Just when I start talking about my kids I find that there are details that I have to leave out about her and only tell about the other three that I have raised simply because I don’t know all the particulars.

I guess I’m saying that it’s not like that. There’s a twinge here and there of doing it wrong, of explaining to someone else why I have changed the number of daughters I claim, and of still missing out on her life. She’s ready to graduate college and go off with her fabulous life with ridiculously perfect skin and her amazing boyfriend (or so I hear, but Facebook is just NOT to be trusted with all those incidentals).

There are new situations and everything is, as to be expected, changing.  With those changes come new feelings. How the hell will I even begin to start navigating these new waters?

Remarkably. That’s how. This journey with my children is nothing if not remarkable no matter how badly I think I’m screwing it up.

One of the traditions with my children for Christmas is to get everyone a new pair of pajamas that they may open on Christmas Eve. The ruse used to be that everyone would “choose” one gift and we would make it the one they would WANT to open but then one year someone chose wrong and ended up with a fire truck when every other kid got lousy pajamas so I am very specific about it now. This year, Mallory felt compelled to purchase them because she found footie pajamas while she was out shopping one day. Footie pajamas is not the correct term, but it doesn’t matter. It fits.

I have to take more pictures of Mallory wearing her footie pajamas where you can actually SEE her feet. They’re kind of awesome. Well, not just her regular feet because those are pretty average, but the feet on these pajamas have monkeys on them and now I’m wondering why I published this before you were able to see the MONKEY FEET. Except that she’s really really cute.

It’s all that being out of practice as a blogger. Who cares? Mom-101 listed me as one of the top 50 Mommybloggers who didn’t make the Babble list and who also probably have secret stashes of Twix candy bars behind the cleaning products under the kitchen sink and also have grown children who wear footie pajamas with monkeys on their feet. 

Pretty sure it’s the latter.

This will be the first year in the history of my being a parent that I won’t be with my children on Thanksgiving day so we have decided to our meal today. It was the basic turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green bean casserole, pumpkin pie (blech. I don’t eat it, but the children do – I just eat the whipped cream out of the can when no one is looking) and cheesecake. I made everybody clear their schedule so we could spend the day pretending like it was really Thursday. I watched a full 10 minutes of a college football game on tv this morning (don’t ask which one, I just wanted it to feel like Thanksgiving) and then later we sat down to view “Miracle on 34th Street” because we didn’t have the real Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade to get us through. Divorce is hard on kids and families and this was the best I could do to make my family enjoy a meal. Creating a family moment that feels right is more work than one would anticipate, but if it’s crafted just so then you can convince yourself it’s Thursday and not really Saturday.

Even though we kept calling it Fake Turkey Day we all pretty much realized that it was important to make the effort for this day. It felt weird at first and any time we needed to go out for something we surprised ourselves with, “Wow, there are SO many stores open today on Thanksgi…OH YEAH THAT’S RIGHT IT’S SATURDAY.” It even ended like our Thanksgiving meals normally do – arguing about who will do dishes and who will put the food in the leftover containers and with everyone sitting around the television afterward with their hands in the waistband of their pants.

Actually, we pretty much do that every Saturday night. We’re doing this family thing the best we can and it’s damn near perfect.