Today is the day that my fourth child (Paris aka @loliboofae) turns 20. TWENTY. Such a nice number, with nice curves and flowy numbers. :)

Paris was born at home on my white couch (yep, white couch. My mom thought I was nuts, but since my son was born on the matching white overstuffed chair without incident, it was all good!) back on March 27, 1998.

This was the first pregnancy where we didn't have any ultrasounds done or anything to find out the sex, etc. Paris was also the first child who had a name without any decisions being made. It was somewhere around 3-4 months into the pregnancy when I suddenly realized one day that I was carrying a girl and that her name was Paris Mae. This was truly bizarre because the other three kids names had been the result of months and months of naming books, debates, etc, but with Paris, her name just "was" and there was NO doubt that it was her name and that she was a girl. My mother in law insisted that I was nuts, because there had only been one girl born in to that side of the family in the last umpteen generations. "There is no way you can be having a girl!"

At any rate, I was happy to prove her wrong, because I'm stubborn like that ;)

My labors had all be fairly fast (and all home births), starting with a 4 hour labor with child #1, an hour and a half with child #2, one hour with child #3 and my midwives were concerned that they wouldn't be able to make it to my house in time for baby #4, so they had their pagers with them (way before anyone I knew had cell phones) at all times. They lived 30 minutes away, so I needed to call them if I even had a hint of labor pains.

Thankfully my water broke before I started having any contractions, so I was able to call them in plenty of time. Well, I was able to page them, anyway. By the time they got there, my contractions had finally started and I settled down on the couch (that was covered with plastic and then a couple of layers of sheets). I had been having occasional pains every few minutes or so for about 15 minutes, but they weren't bad at all. I was almost unsure as to whether or not some of them were actually contractions at all. I suddenly felt like the birth was imminent and since this was baby number four, I kinda had an inkling of how this went. My midwife was in the kitchen doing something sterilizing-wise or whatever and I said, "Caroline, I REALLY think it's time. NOW."

So, knowing me, she came and checked me, saying, "Nope, you've got a little bit yet..." and as she turned to leave the room, Paris came out just like that. I barely pushed, as a matter of fact, I was trying NOT to push, but my body had other ideas.

Paris was TINY. The boys had been right around 8 pounds, but Paris was closer to 7 pounds. She seemed to be the same size as Sprite's doll. As a matter of fact, she wore Sprite's doll's dresses for the first few days.

She grew to be the fattest little butterball of a baby quickly, though. She was healthy and thriving and all of her siblings were in love with their baby sister.

She had a strong personality and when she wasn't even 2 yet, she decided that she would only wear dresses. She didn't want pants and would allow bloomers only. That was quite okay with me, since dresses and bloomers were adorable and I loved dressing her up. Plus, dresses were always on sale for SUPER cheap at garage sales. We'd go to sale after sale, picking up entire outfits for 5 cents a piece, so Paris had play dresses, painting dresses, play in the mud dresses and fancy going out dresses. That phase lasted almost 2 years (maybe longer, my memory is fuzzy) and she was adorable.

As she got older, her artsy side came out. She loved fashion and designed clothes for her dolls, re-imagined and made her T-shirts into dresses and outfits, was constantly cutting up old clothes to make new outfits for her dolls, drawing pictures of new fashion designs, pretty much anything artistic. She loved painting and drawing and I could get her to learn almost anything if I could find a way for her to make an art project with it (the benefits of homeschooling!)

When she was in high school, she attended Apparel Design classes at a local technical college. She stretched the dress code until it nearly snapped (see above for a few outfits) She won contest after contest and ended up going to Washington D.C. for a competition with her design of a dress made from a lamp shade (The assignment was repuposing something into clothing). She thrived at those classes, just like she does at anything artistic...

But I was even more proud of the artwork she did on her own (Including the above, makeup photos she did for her youtube channel that she ran for a couple of years). She is amazingly creative and I really wish that I could help her find a way to channel that side of herself into an actual money making career. I'm trying to get her started on steemit at the moment, but of course that takes some time and consistency and things are so low right now, it is a LITTLE hard to convince a now twenty year old that it's really worth doing!!!

And even with all of her girly side, she doesn't hesitate to ask for instructions on how to build things and she just goes for it. Together we built in a wall so she could have her own room. Later she built her own bed (probably the only time she made her bed, lol) and isn't afraid to try for anything she wants to do.

She is and always has been an amazingly fun person to hang out with. She has always been the one that I love shopping with, because she makes everything fun. I love spending time with her just talking. We can talk for hours. And hours. We've taken pole classes together (and need to get back to it once we get a pole back up in the living room to practice on!) and often spend her nights off hanging out once a week doing bullet journal stuff or just hanging out talking for hours.

As anyone with kids know, the relationships change over the years. She's been closest to Sprite, then Abyni, then Kainan, then Jaedin and then back again. They all very much have such incredibly different personalities that all of their relationships are different. I love love LOVE that they are all pretty much always close, though.

She's ALSO the first one of my children to start dating (yep, child #4 was the first one... BARELY!) and that was a whole adventure in and of itself. She and Jazz have been dating for 5 years as of this past week.

Anyway, I suppose I could ramble on forever about this girl, but let me just say that Paris is amazing to me. I love how much she is like me (and feel bad for her at times because of that, too, because she also has some of the same struggles as I do) and I love how close we are. She is a crazy ray of rainbow-colored-glittery-don't give a shit what society thinks kind of woman and I am beyond proud of who she is and who she is becoming.

Happy Birthday Paris @loliboofae!

On a slightly different note, I am trying to write more parenting type posts. If you have anything in particular that you would like to see me post on or have any questions I can answer about parenting stuff, please ask away or make suggestions in the comments!!!