Birthday Blogging and Family Stories

It's birthday blog time! Happy birthday, mom!

My present will be late so here's a sneak preview of part of your gift and a blog entry to tide you over.

First off: the baked goods. I love fall flavored baked goods a lot. As in cinnamon and spice flavored, not leaf flavored. When trying to decide what to send my mom, I decided to bake some ginger spice cookies. I didn't have the required amount of ginger so I added some more spices to make up for it. See how clever I am? I just add 'spice' to the name to disguise the fact that I can't plan ahead.


They were yummy though and the first ginger cookie I've made that has the proper ginger cookie crackles on top. Which I failed to capture in my photos. Fail.

So expect a package of these guys in the mail soon, mama. Along with some other surprises that I hope you'll like as well.

And now. I think its only appropriate to share family stories on my mom's birthday. Which is unfortunate to the pride of the rest of my family. But it must be done.

When my older sister Mia was born, apparently she won Most Perfect Baby in the Universe award (typical older sister move) and my parents thought, "Geez, babies are great. Let's have some more!" And then with my birth things went terribly wrong and when that was over and done with my personality was somewhat akin to, "Woman who birthed me, what is this terrible place? You will be punished for bringing me to this cruel world. And who is that bearded man? I don't like the looks of him. And also: wah."

The next few years I clung to my mom like a spider monkey and had an emotional breakdown each time she tried to pry me off to indulge in such selfish things as feeding herself. There are few pictures of me as baby and in the ones that exist I am on verge of tears, reaching out to the camera because my mom had dared to be six inches away from me. I was the infant Queen and mother was my servant. My dad likes to tell a story in which Mia and I were going out to go somewhere and the family was in a hurry so my dad tied my shoes. I burst into tears because MOM DIDN'T DO IT.

I eventually became somewhat more emotionally stable. I think. At least I don't have a panic attack when my mom doesn't tie my shoes. But this may only because I now only wear slip on shoes. I also warmed up to The Goofy Bearded One, aka my father.

Since the holidays are approaching, I thought I would also describe the infamous Blankensop sister Christmas video, which scarily portrays the differences between me and my sister. Since Mia is extroversion personified and I am the emotionally repressed introvert, watching any old home video of us interacting is bound to be hilarious.To give you an idea of the differences between my sister and I, here's a scene from a random family video: Toddler Sophie is curled up in a rocking chair, quietly flipping through a picture book. My mom is filming me and I'm bashfully answering her questions. Mia enters the room, looks at my mom filming me. She then storms up to the rocking chair, shoves me out of the chair and says to the camera, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING, MOMMY? HEY, LOOK AT THIS BOOK!! DO YOU WANT ME TO TALK ABOUT THIS BOOK?!"

The Christmas video is a similar experience. Cue video from the early 90's. Mia and I are sitting in the kitchen on Christmas morning. She's maybe eight and I'm about four. I am on the left, smiling shyly at the camera with my giant brown Romanian Orphan eyes. Mia is on the right, sitting on the edge of her seat and appears to have just consumed copious amounts of cocaine. Throughout the entire video she is grinning like a mad loon, talking nonstop and gesturing violently. I'm surprised her hands didn't 'accidentally' go out of control and hit me in the face.

It is also imperative to know that Mia had a speech impediment when she was younger. She sounded like a tiny pixie-like version like Elmer Fudd throughout most of elementary school. She could not manage R's so, like her cartoon cousin, rabbit became wabbit, rascally became wascally etc. With speech therapy she eventually was able to overcome this but it was a particularly hilarious era in Mia's life. Or should I say... hiwawious? In the video I also can't pronounce R's because I'm a baby, cut me a break.

The entire video goes something like this:
Mom: So girls, are you excited for Christmas?
Mia: I LOVE CHWISTMAS BECAUSE SANTA COMES AND BRINGS PWESENTS AND SANTA ATE THE COOKIES AND MILK LAST NIGHT AND I LOVE CWRISTMAS BECAUSE IT IS NICE, WIGHT SOPHIE?!
Me: Wight.
Mom: Sophie, what's that present behind you?
Me: It's-
Mia: IT'S A BEAWR (note: 'bear') AND IT IS A PINK BEAWR AND SHE CALLS IT PINKY. SANTA LEFT IT FOR HER AND I GOT LOTS OF OTHER PWESENTS TOO, WIGHT SOPHIE?!
Me: Wight.

This continues for about ten more minutes. I'm pretty sure the only time I say something other than 'wight' is when Mia attempts to snatch my blankie out of my hands and I say, "Don't touch my bwankie, it's vewy special..." Meanwhile, Mia continues to talk at light speed and at one point spontaneously bursts into song. Luckily she now does improv so she has an outlet for her crazy. The crazy still seeps through some but it is mostly contained.

And yet Mia still insists that I am the weird one because I may or may not have had an onion peel collection as a child. For the record, this is also a lie.

Aren't you proud of your children? What's that you say? What about Piers? What little brother? Just kidding, I have hilarious stories about my brother Piers as well. All in good time, all in good time.

Happy birthday again!