Life Lessons

My poor, sweet Conner. He is so sensitive lately. It seems like he is having to swallow a new, tough, life lesson everyday. Today his prize fish (won from the little baseball carnival on Saturday, I'm sure many of you reading this blog have new finned friends at home as well) went belly up. He only lasted a couple of days! Oh, Conner was just devastated, wandering around the house proclaiming, "It isn't fair!" He thinks that if his fish had to die, Lewis's should go too. Lewis turned to Conner and said, "When your fish died, I had tears!" He was actually a little choked up when he was trying to defend himself with this statement. Ughhhhh! "Boys," I said, "Life isn't always fair. I am sorry your fish died. No we are not getting another one." As if that weren't enough to cope with, Conner gets a second dose of reality. He and Lewis are getting stoked for their upcoming birthdays. They found one of those "birthday" catalogs in the mail and have been combing the pages for the last few days. After listening to them change their minds OVER and OVER on which party they are going to have this year (and the next twenty years to come) I suggested that they write them down. Lewis made his list up to about age 13 or so but Conner, he just kept going and going with his list, SO excited about the many parties he is going to have. I overheard Lewis make this pivotal statement as he was glancing over Conner's shoulder looking at the list. He said, "Conner, if you have a Happy Feet party when you're twenty-three-years-old, people are going to laugh at you." Oh goodness. That was a little harsh. I looked up to see Conner's reaction. It was such a look of shock. Like it had just dawned on him that, yes. . .he WILL be too old to have a Happy Feet party. And then a big gulp, and the look of. . .Oh my, I am going to GROW UP!!! He looked so defeated. He buried his little head down and just sobbed. At this point, I'm up. I looked down at his sweet little birthday list and explained to him AND to Lewis that he can have any old party he wants to have, no matter HOW old he gets! It took some doing, but I finally got a smile out of him. I convinced him that YES, adults can plan their birthdays using the Oriental Trading Party Catalog too. I sat down and made my selection and with a little help, Conner and I decided that I MOST DEFINITELY need to put in my order for the Little Mermaid Deluxe Party Pack. Come October, this will be the perfect way to celebrate birthday number 32 (I also showed Conner that 32 is really just a 23 flipped around. We really don't need to grow old after all)! Oh, these life lessons! Let's see if we can make it through tomorrow a little more smoothly.

Conner with his fish in happier days (just two days ago actually).

Conner's little birthday list (not the best photo, but good enough for the blog). Of course I'll be saving the original document forever and ever!