Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is...

Hey, did you know the Alka Seltzer slogan "Plop, plop, fizz, fizz..." dates back to 1965? I remember it as a kid in the 1970s but did not know it went back so far. If you believe what you read on the Internet. Which I obviously do.

Yesterday as I was watching the Teenager graduate from high school that darn jingle kept running through my head as the ceremony neared the end. See, I've been alternatively feeling sad and glad that graduation was approaching. He was driving me bananas with teenage attitude and teenage B.S. A conversation last week over whether he could participate in the class senior prank -- which was both illegal and dangerous, and to which I said um, NO WAY dude -- devolved into a texting argument in which he informed me that he was *supposed* to do stupid stuff in high school. Nice try, buddy.

No, watching him graduate was not giving me heartburn. Nor was the wrangling my hub and I were doing to keep the Little Toddler Man and Baby C happy and reasonably quiet during the two-hour ceremony. (They were little troupers through the whole thing -- though a lot of cookies were pushed and the hub and the boy walked a lot of laps behind the row of seats in which we were located.)

Nope, I kept expecting to feel emotional or sad or something like that. Maybe it was the distraction of the diaper set, but I realized what I really felt was RELIEF. I did it. I raised a kid! I got him through graduation. OK I didn't do it alone, but with the hub and the Teenager's dad, of course. But still. I was the lead on many things -- grades, sports, being nice to people, working hard. I failed here and there, but overall, I think I did OK as a mom. So as I was thinking about relief, "plop plop" entered my head. He's done. I have taught him many things and hopefully some of the better things will stick with him. Ahhhhhhhhhh.

Earlier in the day, my three-month-old daughter giggled for the first time. It was just a tiny giggle, and I just loved it to pieces. It was also a very nice reminder that I have two kids who will need me every day for a long time.

Now, I know that this isn't the end -- I'll still be a mom to the boy who now towers over me -- but everything changes now and I don't have the day-to-day "did you do your homework/take out the garbage/brush your teeth/flush the toilet/rub my feet" stuff. OK, I never made him rub my feet, scouts' honor.

But I am going to make him run with me at 5 a.m. tomorrow. Heh heh.

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