Happy Birthday Leigh

My niece turned 18 yesterday. 18. I can't believe it. 18. Her brother is in his freshman year at Brown.

These are the two kids that turned my world upside down.

Throughout my childhood and well into my 20s, I never wanted to get married and I certainly never wanted to have kids. I simply never had that maternal instinct at all. I still am not one to look at other people's babies in strollers at the mall and get all mushy. It's just not my thing.

My best friend while growing up was Southern; her family moved here from Tennessee. She lived to get married and raise kids. Throughout our childhood, she would pepper me with unsettling questions that I had never thought about before: "What if we don't have dates to the prom?," "Will you wake up before your husband gets up to put your make-up on?," (Side note: He's lucky if I shave my legs on a quarterly basis) and "What do you think you will name your kids?" (Side note: We talked her out of Bambi -- her daughter owes me one).

She unabashedly went to college to find a husband whereas I went to postpone working for a few years. She found her husband while at home the summer after freshman year and has gone on to raise two great kids. I met my hubby the January after graduation but waited seven years to get married -- and only then agreed because he was my best friend and I couldn't imagine spending my life without him.

But in 1988 and 1989 something fabulous happened in my life. My sister-in-law and brother brought two of the most beautiful, perfect children into this world and my heart literally exploded. It was after hanging out with them as little kids, going to the Discovery Zone and McDonald's, watching them build sandcastles at the beach, drawing pictures for them ("That's a bulldozer? My mom draws way better bulldozers than that") and reading them stories that I thought to myself, "I think I might want kids . . . but only if I can clone these guys."

I still think the world of them except that they've set the bar a little high for my boys. They are great, great kids. Funny, interesting, kind, intelligent, well behaved, polite and high achievers. To the best of my knowledge, they are not partiers nor are they prone to engaging in the stupidity that was my trademark at their age. They are exactly how I want my kids to be -- in their own ways, of course.