Shafted

I have a confession. One I am not proud of, but also one I am sure I'm not the only one that needs to fess up. First a little back story...

Growing up, my little sister always whined about "middle child syndrome" and how she was constantly overlooked. I admit now, it mostly just annoyed me. Being the second child, and one that had "special needs" during a good portion of my childhood, I had ample attention, even with being one of 5 children in the home, and couldn't see how her perspective could really be THAT different from mine. While making our 2009 Christmas card, however, I realized that there just might be something to her claim. We don't have a "middle child" so I still don't really know how valid her claim of injustice is as far as that goes, but I can say with some amount of certainty that in one way or another, when you have multiple kids, inevitably someone will get left out. I'm really surprised to say that this year it was Soni. Soni got shafted. Don't worry, she still got her fair share of love and attention, but we have little to no photographic evidence of it. While looking for pictures to include in the "collage" that became our Christmas card, there were exactly 3 pictures of Soni with her hair done all cute. I'm not sure how this happened, and seeing as how she is the "baby", I never would have thought it would be her to be neglected, but alas...

I suppose we could blame it on the fact that once you have 3 kids all meet the same milestones, the 4th has some tough competition. After all, how big of an accomplishment is it really to get a tooth in comparison to your older sister who is reading, or older brother who's a math whiz. I mean, come on! Step it up, sister!!!

So, I guess this is my public apology to my baby sister who was apparently right about our parents loving me more, who could blame them, right? This is also my public explanation to all those who receive our Christmas card in the mail and wonder why there's not a better individual picture of Soni on it. There isn't one. Plain and simple. For all those who may not get a card in the mail, here is what you are missing out on...