25 has been AWESOME. Thank you for asking.

I have no idea how I’m even going to encompass all the things I did in the last five days– it just feels like so much was crammed into such a small amount of time. First and foremost, thank you all for the letters, comments, emails, phone calls, and packages. I’m not even close to getting back to everyone, but I’m going to try to this week. It just meant a lot to me– that our house was full of gifts and thoughts from all over the world. You are lovely, lovely people and I’m so lucky to have shared my birthday with you.

Michelle came down with Chris and puppy Charlotte the day before Halloween. I don’t remember what we did. Eat a lot. Laugh. And clean up after Charlotte. She’s about 40% housebroken, and while it was great to have a cute puppy around again, it also made me realize what a commitment it was to get Lola the first time and how many late nights we spent watching her for signs that she was going to unceremoniously pee on our carpet.

Halloween day was spent making cupcakes (the box said SPICE, which I don’t think is a real flavor, but think of vanilla chai in baked form; covered in whipped cream cheese frosting). We drew jack-o-lantern faces and carved them out. Elias wanted a picture of Charlotte on his pumpkin, which was sweet, but all we had to carve with was a ginormous knife that made two-inch gashes at a time. It really wasn’t suited for the delicate intricacies of a puppy’s portrait. I told him we should make a ghost, a ghost on the MOON!, and wasn’t that cool?– ghosts? on the moon?– and he just shrugged. It was somewhere between Not As Cool As Charlotte and The Lamest Lame That Ever Lamed.

We trick-or-treated in our neighborhood first, the entire family. Our HOA listed official start time as 6:00, and at 5:59, we started ringing doorbells. Jason followed us for the first ten homes– by that time, other kids had emerged from their homes, and he ran back to ours to hand out candy. (COMPLETE ASIDE: Jason’s co-worker also handed out candy, and one middle school kid apparently came up without a costume. What are you supposed to be? the co-worker asked, keeping the treats at bay. Just give me the candy, old man! the kid snapped. Number one: rude. Number two: people really say Old Man? That’s so cartoony. Number three: he was, like, 22. Which means I am definitely in Old Lady territory.)

Addie barely made it through our street, so as soon as we finished, we dropped her off at the house with Jason. The rest of us climbed in the car and drove to the rich, sprawling neighborhood around the corner. I planned it ahead of time. I knew they’d be giving out good candy, and also it gave me the opportunity to peek into some huge houses. Heh. That neighborhood was INSANELY nice. It was the movie type of neighborhood: tree-lined, stone walkways, front porches with handmade rockers that cost more than our car. One home had front doors that were almost two stories tall, so when they creaked open, it was like a museum was being opened.

There must have been upwards of a hundred children out. Seriously. Two sisters were right behind us, and their names were Sophie and Juju. I know, because every neighbor greeted them happily: “SOPHIE! JUJUUU! Look at you! Turn around for me, model your costume!” or “SOPHIE! JUJUUUU! Dude, I have some SUHWEEET candy for you! Dig in!” or “SOPHIE! JUJUUUU! I hope you’re over that cold from last week! Did the soup I sent over help?”

It was just candy, architecture, children, lights, sparkles, puppies, and overall so saccharine slash magical there aren’t words for it.

Elias fell asleep in the car on the way back. It wasn’t a big surprise; since he’d announced to us he was DONE THE END. The adults stayed up and watched ‘Vacancy’, which Michelle and I expected to be stupid-scary and was actually scary-scary. We ate all the cupcakes in fear instead of biting our nails. (Spice Flavor, as it turns out, is delicious.)

Michelle and Chris drove off the next day after a chocolate store and Sonic run. It was a strange goodbye. They sort of decided they had to leave, and then left.

My mom showed up a few hours later; late dinnertime, early evening. Between Michelle and Mom, I’d gone out for new pants. I’m not much of a shopper– if I have to, I will, but for the most part I’m totally content with two or three things that fit me well and look cute. The thing is, I was down to a single pair of jeans, and I was putting on said jeans that morning and I did this hard tug– just, YANK– and the belt loops tore off, along with the inner thigh seams completely bursting. Argh. So I had to pick up milk and diapers at Wal-Mart, and, while I was there, noticed they were clearancing out some cute brand-name capris. I’m normally not a capri person. I’m five foot three, which doesn’t bode well for anything that cuts me off mid-calf, and most capris hang from the widest part of your thigh, which is decently wide in my case. But I pick out a size 3, because they’re only $8.

I’m not a size 3. I’m a size 4/5. I look at the 3, and I nod to myself: Yes, my hips will TOTALLY fit into this. Why try it on? I already know this is going to turn out AWESOME. I buy it, and try to put them on under my skirt in the car. Major fail. I tell myself it’s just because it’s in the car, and who can really get dressed in the car, anyway? Go home. NO. It will never happen. I tell my Mom about the capris, and how I need to return them for a new pair. My mom is very excited to go out. She’s the only person who likes errands as much as I do. (ANOTHER ASIDE: ‘Errands’ are different from ‘shopping’. Errands are like road trips, shopping is like a family vacation. You can give up on errands at any time. They’re random and pointless, and you don’t have a destination and a goal. I can’t stand going somewhere with a list, but wandering up and down aisles will never cease to be fun to me.)

Long story mildly short– we go out to Applebee’s, we both have dinner, I eat dessert– we go to Target and my mom buys me two new jeans in size 5, a top that ends up looking weird but we didn’t know at the time– then we do Wal-Mart, who closed their return counter twenty minutes earlier so we end up just purchasing new capris and a maroon corduroy jacket. We come home at 11 at night. J is already asleep. I make sure to wake him up and kiss him before settling in for bed.

The next day is a blur of activity. Mom and I decide to get our hair done (well, she offers– I accept), so we drop the kids off at the local babysitting place. Drive to salon. My mom says I can get a massage, too, which I’m both excited and nervous about; since I’m a massage newbie. There are only THREE openings the entire day, and they manage to fit our schedule.

My mom’s hair is cut. She looks adorable.

I am massaged. Highlights: my masseuse is extremely talkative, and chatting the entire time makes me feel better about being virtually naked and rubbed down. But: it hurt at some points. A lot. Apparently, it was a DEEP TISSUE MASSAGE, which my dad went Ohhhhh at later when I told him about the pain. I guess DEEP TISSUE MASSAGES only feel good hours after the fact.

We go out for lunch at Boston Market. I eat a pot pie, and take photos of my mom’s new haircut. My mom is looking so vibrant that day, like a Technicolor human, and my Canon just isn’t capturing it.

Back to the salon. I want bangs. I’m going to get bangs. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, longer than any human being should ponder hair, and I’m going to take the plunge. Hey, it’s a gift, it costs me nothing, and it’s a great salon who probably won’t butcher it like a six-dollar family place might. I’m feeling brave.

My stylist blows my hair out with the largest round brush I’ve ever seen; easily half the size of my head. Tresses are spun out softer and lighter with each stroke she makes, gauzy, like chestnut cotton candy. I’m watching my head in the mirror, wide-eyed, thinking about how DELICIOUS it looks right now.

When she finishes, I don’t know if I want bangs anymore. I had a lot of faith in my face shape being able to pull this off, and the jury is out. I thought I was going to look like Rory Gilmore, circa season seven. Instead, I look like an extra with a bad wig in a Quentin Tarantino film.

My mom likes it. She says I look like a college student, which is cute. We pick the kids up (who are eating cheese balls: “We just eatin’ cheez balls,” Elias keeps repeating, “dat’s all we do, eatin’ cheez balls.” and Addie concurs, “Eat da cheez.”), and the grand total for our four-hour babysitting trip is a whopping seventy-odd dollars. Add that to our whopping salon bill, and this is the most expensive Mom-treated day since my wedding.

(Also, Elias stopped when he first saw me and gasped: “What. Mommy, you look FANCY!” which I totally did the hand-over-heart thing and melted. Eli is notoriously honest, and there was just as good a chance he’d choose STUPID as FANCY.)

Stop at home. Curling iron my bangs, just a little; so they look less flat but not Totally 80′s. Better. We go out shopping some more. Come back and meet Jason at the house for food, who sees my bangs and kind of– does a Huh.

BECCA: Well– what do you think?

JASON: Let me… just… let me look for a minute.

Jason did NOT want bangs. Jason likes virtually any hairstyle, minus bangs. Jason would be okay if I buzzed my head, as long as it was bang-free.

He did hate them at first, too. He’ll deny it– and he was polite enough– but they bothered him. As the night went on, though, and they started getting a little messier and less Just Cut, he became intrigued. By the end of the evening, he was all, “Heeeey, Miss Bangs.” I think the fact that I looked so different was kind of an enticing thing, like it was still the same woman but NOT TOTALLY. Like I was a twin Becca that he knew nothing about, totally wild and full of reckless abandon; the kind of twin who would cut her hair off with no forewarning, the kind of sexy twin WITH BANGS.

My mom went back to the hotel. My dad drove into town. They met at said hotel for happy hour, and the kids fell asleep. We pushed back our dinner date till the next day.

Jason and I are talking about my birthday as the clock hits midnight, and I tell him I think I was born at 7. “Morning or night?” he asks. “Morning, I think,” I answer.

“Did you know I remember the day I was born?” I continue. “Yeah, everything is kind of peachy in my memory, but I’m pretty sure the walls were white. My mom was holding me. She had a really tight perm, like an afro, and her hair was dark. My dad had a mustache. He was smiling the way he does that takes up the whole lower half of his face, and there was light coming from a window to the right. I felt– confused.”

“Well, if it was 7 in the morning, you were probably wondering what you were doing up so early,” Jason says.

OH MY GOSH. BEST BURN EVER. We laughed for like twenty minutes, tucked into the covers, and he’d tickle me when I’d pause for a breath. I’m incredibly ticklish.

Saturday morning, I wake up to Jason’s face over mine: “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!”

“What,” I moan, struggling to sit up. He’s wearing a jacket and knit cap, which means he’s been out. “Look what I got for you,” he announces, bringing in:

A bowl of my favorite organic cereal with soy milk, since I said I wanted to vegan diet.

‘License to Wed’, because I’d watched ‘The Office’ the night before and wanted more John Krasinski.

A card the entire family had signed.

Fresh Diet Pepsi.

“I wanted to get you calla lilies,” he added, “but Harris Teeter only had two, and they were nearly dead. They had peace lilies, too, in a pot, but they cost $28 and I wasn’t sure you’d like them.”

“Aw,” I beamed, both happy at the thought and that he’d decided against spending thirty dollars on a plant I’d probably kill.

I eat the cereal and drink the Diet Pepsi. The kids are all dressed, so I call my dad to see if they want to do breakfast. Okay! We decide on The Cracker Barrel, since I’ve lived within a mile of one our entire marriage and had never eaten there. We go, ask for a table for six. Wait outside on the Cracker Barrel rockers. Man, I love rocking chairs. My dad gets lost on the way. My mom

arrives. My dad is still lost. We’re waiting for our name to be called. Dad finally arrives, and Eli screams GRANDADDY and they run and embrace like it had been years since in the last visit. Addie goes up after Eli, intoning, “Gimme a HUUUUGGG!”

Breakfast is great. Jason talks about his job, and my parents sympathize. I keep forgetting they’re all in the same line of work. I eat Addie’s grilled cheese after she tells me NO GWOSS, thus ending my three hours of veganism.

Back to the house. We’re only there about fifteen minutes when Becky Jo and Dave arrive. BECKY JO! BECKY! I’m so excited. I think we’re both actually shaking, like we’re being electrocuted with Rad.

She brings presents, which I didn’t expect, and I just realized she has brought something every. single. time I’ve seen her. There are gifts for the kids (a CareBear book for Addie, a robot activity book for Eli), and an assortment of things she saw in Target that she thought I might like. “There’s no real theme,” she assures me. “It’s just– stuff that I saw. And it looked cool, at least for the moment.”

The gift basket includes a fuzzy duck pen, a stuffed spider, chip clips, picture frames, an origami kit, Pixie Sticks, lollipops, a green thermal shirt, vegetarian cookbook, and fuzzy socks. There’s also a Burt’s Bees lip balm, which we both try on. (The boys are a little grossed out by this, like we’re sharing gum.) The balm is frosty shimmery pink. It looks BAD. We crack up.

Both my parents talk about their extensive exercise routine. My dad demonstrates Wacky Jacks, which becomes a running joke for the rest of the weekend. Wacky Jacks are HILARIOUS. They don’t look anything like regular jumping jacks, they’re more like a spastic dancing elf.

My mom has to leave, so we all bid her a fond farewell. Becky and Dave brought Guitar Hero for the Wii, and the boys want to play it. Addie is asleep. Eli, Becky, my dad, and I all want to go ROCK CLIMBING. Rock climbing in BIG CAPITAL LETTERS. There’s a climbing facility less than ten minutes away, and my dad offers to pay.

I’ve only been climbing once before, in Colorado Springs nearly a decade ago. It was at a Christian summer camp. In a weird bit of trivia, one of my cabin mates was a world champion rock climber, and so I got to learn a bit from her. It was one of the best experiences of my life. To say I was stoked was an understatement.

Oh, rock climbing. ROCK CLIMBING, in big capital letters. I can’t even swoon enough about it. The employees were personable, knowledgeable, friendly. They loved Eli, and were especially impressed when he signed his name on the release forms: “Way to go, little dude!” We chose to do auto-belayers for the day. Basically, it’s a spring you attach to your harness, and when you fall, it floats you back down. It does the job of someone spotting you. It terrified me the first time I fell (which was the first climb, halfway up), but you drop so slowly and easily. It became our favorite thing: getting to the top, then rappelling back down.

We all take turns, since there are only five auto-belaying mechanisms in the building. My dad is the first to scale something entirely. He is INSANE. My dad is in better shape than almost anyone I know, and he rocked climbing. (No pun intended.) There’s one wall in particular that he made it to the top of, twice, that neither Becky nor I could get a third through– it bends at the halfway point, so the second part you’re hanging at a 45 degree angle like Spiderman.

Becky Jo and I can do two of the five walls completely. There’s a four-sided column with auto-belays on opposing sides. I think I make it to the top of one. Maybe. I know I didn’t do the other side. In fact, Becky and I spent about thirty minutes on that one; cheering each other on as we tried and failed.

“It’s the grips,” we agree. “What are we supposed to do with those?” (Unlike most of the grips, which are almost cup shaped so you can sink several fingers in and hook on, these are just barely-there bumps with nothing to hold onto.)

A really pretty young Sheryl Crow type woman is climbing a wall without any assists. She talks to my dad and Elias about it. Eli comes bounding over ten minutes later, showing me his chalky hands: “–and she opened her purse and it had powder and I put my hands in da powder, and den I went on the wall, and da lady hewped me climb, and I went up, and now I a ROCK STAR! I gonna be a ROCK STAR because I climb so much. I can do any of dese now, because I can do all da climbing.”

Apparently, the woman had called Eli a little “rock star”, which she did again later when I was within earshot. It did wonders for his kiddie ego. He got a lot more adventurous once he figured he was infallible.

We ache all over, but we have a blast. We climb until we literally can’t climb any more: until we can only make it as high as we can stand because our arms won’t reach and our fingers won’t grip.

Home. Boys are still playing Wii guitar. Addie is awake, and dancing around in her diaper. Dinner plans are pizza, which we first try to order from a place that’s closed, and then order from a wrong location in a chain. Jason and Dave drive to pick the food up. Becky Jo and I try ‘Guitar Hero’. Our band, The Becka Projkt, is sort of sucky because I’m sort of sucky. Becky rocks at guitar. She could do Wacky Jacks while playing, and I have to use all my energy just to press the right buttons.

Jason teases us because he takes photos of us in front of the television, and in the course of almost ten minutes, we stay in the exact same spots. He starts saying he should make a series of shots where the sun goes down and moon comes up, and we’re still frozen in place, strumming almost imperceptibly.

I’m so tired. I have to end this soon. I can barely type, or keep my eyes open.

We watch ‘License to Wed’, which is unwatchable, and complain about it for hours afterward. Play some Scene It, go to bed. Breakfast. Boys play more Wii, determined to beat their scores. Girls play with kids. Becky Jo thinks Addie looks like a little doll. She really does. She is so squeaky and precious. Ads goes down for a nap, the remaining girls plus Eli go to look at houses. Nothing is open. Daylight savings time means we have an extra hour (score), but it also means there’s another hour padding.

We walk through a home under construction. Six bedrooms, on a wooded lot that overlooks a lake. Built in bookcases EVERYWHERE. In the car, we try and figure out how we could convince the husbands to buy it and share. (“You guys like playing ‘Guitar Hero’ together, right?… A lot?”)

Becky Jo and Dave had to leave when we got back, which made me so gloomy I don’t want to write about it. We’ll have to drive up and visit. Soon.

Today I woke up– my first Monday as a 25-year-old!– cleaned the entire house, paid bills, did three full loads of laundry, read books, practiced English and Math with Eli, did anatomy with Addie, read a novel, showered, blow-dried AND curled my hair, baked cookies, watered and weeded the garden, and made pasta for dinner. That’s the main difference so far between 24 and 25. I’m not as lazy. That, and the bangs. Heh.

Jason is going upstairs, which is my sign to finish up. I wrote down this little conversation Elias and I had yesterday, because it was so sweet, and it just seemed like the perfect note to go out on–

Woah, rock climbing killed my arms, I moaned, coming down the stairs. Elias was watching me from the living room. Concerned. I said, I’m getting too old for this.

How long you getting old? he demanded.

I’m getting old now.

You don’t LOOK old. When I sit on the couch, he puts his hand on my face; studying. Then, earnestly: Your skin is not old. You don’t look old.

Oh, thank you; you sweet little boy.

What’s old mean?

Well, you know how you turned 3 to 4? Each year, you turn a new number when time goes by. Soon you’ll be 5, then 6, then 7, 8, 9. Someday I’ll be a grandma. (This is his way of identifying a person over 50: ‘”old like a grandpa”.) And you’ll be a daddy.

How long till I be a daddy?

Oh, a long time. Many, many years. I smile. But we’ll have a lot of fun until then, okay?

His big blue eyes are solemn. When I turn into a daddy, I will come take care of you when you be a grandma. We will be a family all the time.

Yeah, this aging thing? Not so bad. Kind of special, actually, enjoying the next generation.

(Photos are coming first thing in the morning, or first thing in the early afternoon. Check back here, and Flickr. I took like 1,216 pictures, so there has to be something good in the batch.)