Between my blogging history, Twitter, and context clues, you probably already know, but today is Caelyn’s 2nd birthday. We’re having a party this Saturday with the immediate and extended fam, but it was on this date two years ago in an operating room that a doctor peeked over the sheet at an incredibly swollen me and said, “Okay, it’s gonna feel like there’s an elephant on your chest. Ready?” and then drew his elbow way back past his ear and shoved Caelyn’s head out of my ribcage.

Caelyn doesn’t know today’s her birthday. I burst into her room this morning with a huge smile and a, “HEY! IT’S YOUR BIRTHDAY!” She just smiled, pointed at her posterior, and said, “Biper?”

But, still, I couldn’t let the day go uncelebrated, could I?

Birthday Stop No. 2

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As of today, I’m just one episode away from wrapping my start-to-finish Gilmore Girls marathon. I’d have finished months ago if I hadn’t been sharing the DVDs with, first-time watcher and my sister, JSmo. But the truth is, I’m glad for the delays. Not because I haven’t enjoyed these last few seasons and not just because I’m glad for her to have had the chance to become friends with the Gilmores, but because I’m honest-to-goodness sad that the next 45 minutes I spend with the reigning Lorelai and her lady-in-waiting will be my last.

Of course, I’m exaggerating. I own the entire series on DVD for goodness sake. But I still sighed along with Rory today as she looked around her empty college apartment and closed the door for good, even with the words “wide open” on her lips. (You guys remember when Lex pointed out the immense importance of doors in this show, right?

I guess I’m just reliving that same twinge of sadness I felt last year when I sat on my couch in near tears, bidding the girls, “Bon Voyage. Forever.”

And I was a little sad today thinking about how even if I wrote one heck of a new post about those fast-talking gals, it just wouldn’t be as fun as it was back when those final episodes were first hitting the airwaves and I’d only begun to warm up the For the Record keyboard.

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Yesterday was our 4th anniversary. (Yes, it was also Juneteenth.) To celebrate, we enlisted Cristin to babysit and had dinner at The Melting Pot in Addison, where we ate on the night we got engaged. Then we caught The Promotion at the Angelika Film Center at The Shops at Legacy and wrapped the night with a stroll and two double-sized cappuccinos.

I have to tell ya. It was pretty darn nice. We dressed up and everything! And we haven’t done that for a date, since, well, the last time we had dinner at The Melting Pot.

Over fondue, we tried to recall how we’ve marked our previous anniversaries:

1. We were still in Abilene. We know we ate crab at Red Lobster. We think we purchased and watched Jurassic Park in bed with the top layer of our wedding cake.

2. I was huge. Caelyn only had 11 more days of sweet womb time. We had crab again. Neither of us remembers what happened afterwards. Maybe we came home & I fell right to sleep. Maybe we went to the theater. If we did, we can’t remember what we saw. I think it came down to Cars or Nacho Libre, and we saw the former because of the time. (I STILL haven’t seen Nacho Libre.) Or maybe it was Mission Impossible: III. Last night we were thinking we saw Superman Returns, but we actually caught that one two days before Caelyn arrived.

3. We did a back-to-back double feature with Ocean’s Thirteen and Mister Brooks, after packing it away at Saltgrass.

I know what you’re thinking. Since we’re obviously not mondo-anniversary celebrators, why would we have a big-to-do date for the 4th? It’s not like 4 is 5 or 10 or 35.

Honestly, we didn’t have a reason, other than the fact that I had told Chris that I thought he ought to take me back to The Melting Pot if and when that unforgiving black skirt I wore on our engagement night fit again, and we both could’ve more than used the retreat from the norm.

So we made a night of it.

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I’m working during a short, late nap here, so I don’t have time to tell you all the things I’ve been thinking about over the last week (like the Britax Boulevard and visiting family and passed fitness goals and why the Kingdom keeps slipping into my conversations), so I’ll just tell you the most time-sensitive one:

Happy (late) Father’s Day!

. . . to the fathers who frequent For the Record and especially to Chris, who, in case you don’t know, is the father of that little cutie we feature here on a regular basis, Caelyn. (Incidentally, he’s also my husband.)

Our church is launching a new non-profit organization called Parenting Alone, which will provide resources, child care, counseling, and other assistance to single parents. (IBC already has a substantial single parenting ministry, but Parenting Alone is envisioned as something nondenominational and outside of the church that will hopefully grow into multiple store-fronts across the country.)

This past Sunday, they introduced the idea to the congregation via a video of IBC women sharing the pain and struggles they faced after going through a divorce with children. (Of course, not all single parents are divorcees and not all single parents are women. Some parents even start out as single parents. The peolpe on this video just happened to be divorced women. No matter the case, I’d guess that facing parenthood on your own isn’t easy. I think it’s downright terrifying for a lot of people.) Even though I’ve never been a single parent, these women’s stories stirred something in my heart for them and other parents like them, and they made me think about my own life, particularly back to before Caelyn was born when I worked at a biblical counseling ministry in North Dallas.

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Sorry for my cyber-absence. It’s been a long week.

Last Monday, Caelyn stuck a hair clip in her mouth and choked on it until she finally (miraculously) got it down. I’ve always felt that putting anything in her hair was risky, but she rarely takes those clips out. And two weeks ago I bought bigger ones with the specific intention of reducing the choking risk.

Needless to say, she did take one out and I didn’t reduce the risk enough.

After the orange incident THE FREAKIN’ WEEK BEFORE, I brushed up on my “What to do when my toddler chokes” knowledge, so I knew the moves. Doing them, though, was more complicated than I expected, because she resisted me with all her strength. But I did my best, which was enough to help her breathe off and on before downing the thing. And, fortunately, Chris was there and came out when I banged on the wall.

Even with it swallowed, we had to go to the ER to make sure it was in a “good” place, which meant Caelyn couldn’t have anything to eat/drink (she missed snack and dinner) in case we needed to do a procedure, and we were in for a long evening of waiting, hunger, stranger anxiety, exhaustion, and outright terror.

In the end, we were only there for 3 1/2 hours, and although Caelyn thought they were ripping her heart out of her chest when they took x-rays, everything turned out fine. The clip had cleared the chest cavity and all we had to do was wait for it to come out — which it did 2 days later.

I’d thought about kids swallowing things before, but never about the possible consequences besides choking or poisoning. The triage nurse told us not to let her throw up, because she could just as easily choke (and die) when it came back up. So if it had gotten stuck somewhere in the middle they would’ve had to surgically go in and remove it.

Thankfully, that’s not how it went for us. We all came home healthy and even a little disappointed that we didn’t get to see the x-rays.

Then on Thursday Caelyn and I got an early start on errands. We picked up sparkly stickers for party favors at Michael’s, then headed south for lunch and Hobby Lobby, but our trip was cut short in front of Wal-Mart, where a lady pulled out in front of me and the only thing to do was hit her.

I’ve never been in a wreck (or a “fender bender”) as a driver or a passenger. I’ve never even gotten a traffic ticket, so all the excitement was “novel” to me. Still, as cynical as this may seem, it wasn’t entirely unexpected. Everyone’s number has to come up eventually. Seriously, I don’t know how anyone can commute in the metroplex for any length of time and not think something like that. On the most part, I don’t mind DFW traffic, and I think it’s “friendlier” than most of the traffic in other big Texas cities, but when you pass one or two accidents both to and from work every single day, you gotta wonder.

I stopped wondering last week.

Here’s the recap:

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