Silence is golden.  The kids just got on the bus.  The loooonnnngggg vacation is over!

½  Pint no longer likes her coats.  She has three of them.  One brown, which her teacher allegedly and inexplicably told her not to wear anymore….(I am seriously questioning this statement), a black one with nice fur trim, and a blue puffy one.

The brown one is out due to the previously alleged comment by said teacher.  The blue one is out because  “meemaw!  It is PUFFY !  I can’t wear a PUFFY coat!!  All the kids will say YOU HAVE A PUFFY COAT!!”

The black one was acceptable except…  the arms are way too long.  ½  Pint, has my short arms.  (well, all the Pint’s except for ¾ Pint have inherited my short arms).  She was actually crying over the fact that the arms were too long.

Those kids at school must be really picky.  She told me that they would make fun of her because her coat arms were too long.  She wanted me to cut them to fit.

Okay.   I did.  Problem solved.  They look a bit funny to me, but I am not five years old and I don’t go to school.  What do I know?  We turned up the sleeves one turn and exposed the fur on the underside so it still looks like the coat has fur trim.  I know that most people’s coats do not fit their arms right.  I am an adult. I can live with this fact.

She is five and cannot.  Her coat must fit exactly right.  Scissors are a gift from God at 8 am when a kid won’t wear a coat and it is cold outside. Take your blessings when and where they occur is my thought.

My back hurts today.  Pint ended up in our bed again last night.  I told her this morning when we all three awoke with sore backs and stiff muscles….”honey, you cannot sleep with meemaw and pappy anymore.”

A King sized bed won’t fit my furniture, nor my room.  And anything less than king size won’t fit three people in a bed which contains DH.

I get my unemployment check today.  Have to go into town. Good on though, we actually got down to counting pennies, something we haven’t had to do for about 10 years.  Quarters, occasionally, once in a great while, dimes.  Nope. This time we went clear down to nickels and then passed nickels and went to pennies.

I am not supposed to be this broke at age 52.  Something is so not right with this picture.

Baby’s boyfriends birthday is tomorrow.  His present is fortunately on the truck for delivery TODAY.  Good thing too, she would NOT understand why, if she ordered it last week, it didn’t show up before his birthday.  She doesn’t understand things like holidays, ISO 9000 or whatever it is called and shipping times.  I have tried to explain these little things to her, but no.  In her world, if she needs/wants something, it should be automatically and magically produced immediately.  It’s nice to be the baby ***grinning***

There really isn’t much else good about being the youngest, lets face it.  My attitude is that she has put up with Sh** from every other child, blended families, divorces, deaths, arrests of inlaw siblings, births, etc.  She deserves whatever she can get in my book.  

She started out the second child of a couple, one of which included my DH.  They divorced.  We got married when she was not quite 2.  So her family then consisted of One older brother at her Mom’s and the addition of two older sisters at our house.

Then her mom had another baby and got married.  So she then had a younger sister.  Then Mom had another baby.  So she had a total of two older sisters, one older brother and two younger sisters.  Then mom got divorced.  Then mom got remarried and that man had four children.   Then somewhere in there, two of her sisters got married and brought in laws, then one of her brothers got married to my niece and there was another inlaw.

So then, she had  a cumulative total of …..four older sisters and two brother in laws, one in prison, two of the sisters have the same name, three older brothers, one cousin/sister in law,  her, and two younger sisters.  Even I can’t keep up with it. LOL.

And then there are the nieces and nephews.  No. Wait. Only nieces.  No nephews at all.

Anyway, this child has grown up in the midst of every single thing that could happen in a child’s life which wasn’t abuse, but definitely impacted her. So, she is a little spoiled. Not rotten, just spoiled. And I could care less. She doesn’t do much, but the one thing you can say, is if I ask her to do something, she does it for me without complaining and with a smile and does it every single time I ask. She is the Baby. The other kids aren’t jealous.   At least not the ones on our side of the mixed up mess we call family.  She is the baby to them as well.

And surprisingly (NOT), she doesn’t want children for a very long (if ever) time.  Pint is only 10 years younger than her, so Baby grew up watching me raise babies.  She has plenty of babies around her.  She figures if she needs a baby, she will just borrow one.  It’s not like we don’t have any. Then, she can give it back when she is done.

There is a method of birth control I have always used.  Not birth control.  More like sex education.  It seems to have worked.

When they are between the ages of 5 and 10, let them watch a birth of a puppy or kitten.  When the mother goes and eats the afterbirth, casually remark that “yeah, that part is pretty gross isn’t it.  I about puked my guts out when I had to do that after YOU were born…” and then leave the room.

Then, when they are over 14 years old, let them witness a live birth, in person, preferably a totally natural birth.  Let them be there the entire time.

They won’t want kids for a long long time.  When she witnessed ¾ Pint’s birth, which was totally natural, and ¾ pint was over 9 pounds at birth, she got on the elevator with my best friend who has five children, four of whom are adopted.

She said.  “baba?  Is it hard to adopt?”