<p>How funny to see this conversation this a.m. as I was just thinking about D and S's babyhoods this morning. It does seem like this year is different --the last that we have kids "at home"--maybe we will get out the baby videos and pictures this holiday season. I wish I had made a "just" Christmas album.
Harriet--does Santa still come to your house?</p>
<p>harriet--oh I bet your little guy will have an adjustment...he's always sounded sooo cute and I imagine has gotten lots of affection from his sibs. my 12 yr old s cried the morning his big bro left. and I know seeing his sis leave will be tough. they are very close and share many inside jokes and their love of family guy. I saw myself trying to "baby" my youngest in an effort to stave off the "end of an era" sadness. He got a kick out of it, kissed me on the cheek and went back to his electric guitar playing a Red Hot Chili Peppers song...aargh those third children grow up too fast.</p>
<p>missypie--I melted on the floor at the senior award ceremony where they showed a slideshow of each senior as a baby morphing into their senior self. it was absolutely adorable and incredibly cruel at the same time. be warned it only gets worse as they start to distance themselves and find all our faults as parents so irritating they can't wait to leave.</p>
<p>*missypie--I melted on the floor at the senior award ceremony where they showed a slideshow of each senior as a baby morphing into their senior self. it was absolutely adorable and incredibly cruel at the same time. *</p>
<p>Years ago, when I went to my youngest daughter's first gymnastics banquet, there was a Senior and they did a video of her. Above the music, you could hear the sobs of the girl and the coach and her mother!</p>
<p>missypie - the store is closed. :D But H agrees with you.</p>
<p>oregon, yes, Santa still comes here. The two big ones are SO much bigger that they get the parental fun of keeping the story going, unlike just-a-little-older sibs who may enjoy bursting the bubble.</p>
<p>lindz - the awards ceremony sounds devastating. And you get this again this spring, right? </p>
<p>We have an awesome nephew (now married) who came to D's graduation, and still teases us three years later than H and I held up very well until the awful moment when, into one of those odd beats of total silence, we sobbed in unison.</p>
<p>missypie--exactly right...
firefly--I spent Saturday tooling around with my youngest, taking him to guitar lesson, holiday shopping etc. </p>
<p>signing him up for 5 more guitar lessons=$100.
new sneakers buy one get one
trip to walgreens for toiletries= $14.
My very sophisticated, sometimes sarcastic, but always affectionate 12 yr old turned to me in the car and said, "mom I really like just hanging out with you" = priceless.</p>
<p>last night was the end of season soccer banquet and each Sr. girl had a poster with her name number and pictures from childhood rec leagues under 6s on up. sniff. Plus, have been getting out the Christmas snapshots..sniff sniff...My girls are my compadres. Without them my house will be so male dominated next fall I can't even imagine what it will be like. I told my DH I was getting a female puppy but that would most likely put us over our canine carrying capacity...sigh :(</p>
<p>Congrats on Tulane Dizzy!</p>
<p>lindz so sweet! I love those rare "Thanks Mom"s </p>
<p>Harriet: Speaking of younger ones missing older ones, DS (8th grade) in spite of the occasional disagreements tells his sisters "I love you." at bedtime every night and I do think he, like the rest of us, will miss them more than he knows.</p>
<p>D and I text all the time. I'm not as good as she is but she texts her friends more than they chat on the phone, which is great, because we have unlimited text messaging!</p>
<p>Every little thing I do with D brings a tear to my eye (and she just rolls hers). For years now, our crawlspace is located in her bedroom behind her bed. Yesterday I (again) asked her to move the bed and get the Christmas decorations out. I said that it will be the LAST time I ever ask her to do it (she hates this yearly chore). <em>last time, so sad</em></p>
<p>Thought I would share this story, because my son's classmates, along with his teachers, have gotten a good laugh.</p>
<p>Last night, we were just done with dinner. My son was at the computer doing homework. The phone rang. I said that it probably was a college calling for him. We've gotten several calls around the dinner hour from schools.</p>
<p>The youngest son picks up over with the phone, has his hand over the mouthpiece and says to his older brother, "It's Harvard."</p>
<p>The older son thinks he's kidding. Then, he looks down at the caller ID and almost freaks.</p>
<p>It really was Harvard. They wanted to remind him to submit his application by Jan. 1 and wanted to know if he had any questions about financial aid, student life, etc.</p>
<p>That's the last time that older son will doubt the phone is for him.</p>
<p>We've heard too many stories about kids having to live with bad consequences due to something they put on Facebook. Until now, none of our kids have had them. A couple of days ago Son (weeks away from his 18th birthday) started one. I looked at his main picture last night. Yikes! It's a head shot of himself dressed up as a rock star for a homecoming float - black eye liner, spiked hair, etc. A cool picture, but I had to say, "So you're waiting to hear from two more schools. Do you really want them to see that?" He replaced it with something more boring.</p>
<p>Almost all of the pictures linked to him were uploaded by his girlfriend, so an admissions officer who looked him up would think she's the only thing going on in his life.</p>
<p>Oh well. Now I have to worry about the younger two doing it.</p>
<p>You might want to have a talk with him (and the younger two) about the privacy settings. Keeping everything on "friends only" is a good idea - not just for kids, either.</p>
<p>Friends only - check. Anyone else want to educate me further?</p>
<p>My kids all have facebooks but they are invisible if I wanted to locate them (I know the facebooks exist because sometimes they leave the screen up). But maybe that's too much privacy for some kids.</p>
<p>If they're using their own names, you should be able to locate them (though not able to see their profiles if they've set the privacy controls to friends only). </p>
<p>College kids usually use their own names, but I know that many h.s. kids use variant forms of their names, possibly hoping to elude parental/college searchers?</p>
<p>(This is a reply to Muffy's post, below.)</p>
<p>CC is really having trouble with the ordering/time-stamping of posts!</p>
<p>Possible that they varied their names, but I think you can set the privacy settings so high that the only people who can see you have a page are the people you've invited to see you because it does look like my kids post on other pages with their real names. But I could be wrong. Anyway, I can find some of their friends very easily but can't find my own kids at all.</p>
<p>You're absolutely right. Though most kids don't do it, you can set privacy to keep you invisible unless the searches come from friends (or friends of friends).</p>
<p>(posted out of order again)</p>
<p>Many of these schools gets thousands of applications each season. Do college admissions committees really take the time to search for Facebook pages? I've heard anecdotal evidence to this effect; but are there really any hard data?</p>
<p>I don't know. I bet they do for the "big" scholarships. If son narrows it down to any of the schools affiliated wtih our religious denomination, he will be applying for small denomination-based scholarships. I would think (hope) that at least those committees would check.</p>
<p>(responding to Zetesis' post below)</p>
<p>The timing thing is so odd. I can reply to people's questions before they ask them! At home, we have a problem with our cable and we see a shadow of what is to come - it was great during the Olympics - we saw the winner before the event was over!</p>
<p>I bet it happens when an applicant's resume looks a little too much like Mother Theresa's; the person reading it decides to google him/her for fun?</p>
<p>It's all a sign of the times... in four years, there will be some other application (ie. facebook, twitter) out there and we'll be worrying it will hurt the job search chances... at least they are up to speed on the latest technology now. We text each other all day... and w/ my kids having funny ringtones, I sometimes get them in trouble at school... oops... just wanted to remind them to not forget an after school event or dentist appointment....</p>