Today is Elliott's half-birthday. And for those of you struggling to do the math right now, Shelbi has made it easy to calculate how many months old that it is with the photograph below. So tonight, Elliott was asleep, Shelbi was reading her book about assasinated presidents (Did you know that Lincoln was killed with a Derringer?) and I was watching TV just the way I like it... in 30-second increments until the channel bores me. In all, it was a very pleasant evening.

I'm not even sure exactly how it started but we got to talking about her very creative sign idea. Shelbi loves signs. We have cannisters in our kitchen labeled "coffee", "tea", "flour", "sugar" and "pasta". Guess what is in each of them. She drinks her coffee out of a mug that also says "coffee" on it. (Mmm, this beverage hits the spot. What do they call this again? Ah yes.) We have bags in our house with the names "Shelbi" and "Elliott" on them and so help you if you try to put an item into one of those bags if your name is not either Shelbi or Elliott. For Christmas a few years ago I got Shelbi a labelmaker that she had been begging me to get for her since she moved back from Japan. I joked that she is preparing for the chance that she is stricken with Alzheimer's disease in 50 years.

Anyway, I benignly asked her at what age she would stop using the signs. She said that after he turns 1 she would probably just take pictures of him on his birthday. Then she paused and said: "But who knows what kind of sign technology is going to be around in 25 years?" This stopped me in my tracks. For a split-second all I could think about was "Signs... of the FUTURE!" Would Elliott be standing next to a robot butler that was holding his age on a sign? Would his age be written on a space rock on our moon colony? But then the real issue at hand struck me. 25 years? You're going to make our 25-year old hold a sign that says "25 years" on it while you take his picture with your hologram camera? You're going to make our teenage son hold a sign on his birthday every year? Elliott already looks put out at 6-months old and just wants to get to the part where he can eat the sign.

I said it would be embarrassing. She said it's what mother's do and pointed out that, during birthday dinners at my mom's house, the celebrated child got to eat off a "You are Special Today" plate, a plate that we all still had the pleasure of eating off of into our 20s. So perhaps Shelbi is in the right here. I just don't want to be in the middle of the argument on Elliott's 16th birthday when he doesn't want to hold his sign because we didn't get him the Moon Buggy he was hoping for.