To a new decade

That was weird... blogger made my post disappear... ?? It's back. You can rest easy.

(This photo is actually from our anniversary last week... but I needed a visual. And the only one I have from last night was taken by the Roy's waiter and I don't feel like scanning it in.)

As of yesterday. I. Am 30.

Probably every birthday for the past 30 years (of the ones I can remember) have included someone asking if feel any older. My answer is always the same. I feel no different. And yet somehow I've traveled 30 years of my life-span. THIRTY years. Today, I feel different.

I saw this post from my friend Rebecca. She writes about how her face is changing-- older? skinnier? I found myself hollering "amen"s. Skinnier doesn't seem like the right word for me, since I'm working on baby-weight... but somehow, things are sinking, or hollowing out. My eyes seem deeper and my nose seems bigger. I think my smile is getting narrower as my teeth are trying to revert to pre-brace days and I don't have the tolerance for a retainer anymore. I've got lines and crevices where I used to just have rosy cheeks I cursed. My hair is fluffy and course, not hangy and smooth like it once was. (Although I finally caved and got some Moroccan Oil and I think it might be changing my world.)

"So my hair and face are getting older, but my personality is stuck solidly at sixteen."

I read this in Rebecca's post and can't say it better than that.

I'm realizing this is how it's going to be. My body and face will just keep aging. People will be less and less surprised by my having three children (I confess I'm depressed every time I mention, "oh no, he's my third" and they nod as if that makes sense-- pft-- they're supposed to be shocked--- I'm so young of course.) They will call me ma'am and ask me if it's rude to ask my age (yes, A, that's you. :)), and all the while I will foolishly skip around town feeling like everyone probably thinks I'm the babysitter. Yes, I am that woman from the rad mini-van ads.

I'm thirty.

Luckily I know that it doesn't actually matter if I have deeper smile lines and thinner eyelashes and wiry, darker roots. It's ok that I don't have a flat tummy, that I don't have bright, rested eyes, that I don't have smooth hamstrings anymore. I'm thirty and I have this family. I have this husband and these three kids and it can't get much better than this. Now that I think of it, I think this will be the best decade yet.

This has been productive. Thanks for letting me work through it.