My baby is an adult now

Lea turned 18 yesterday, October 6, 2008, and for a LONG time she wanted to get a tattoo. She actually has been wanting to get one since she was 18 but I refused to let her have one. She had to pay with her own money to get this. She used all the birthday money she got from everyone and paid for this tattoo.

This is the tattoo she originally picked out for herself. She has been talking about this for a LONG long time.

My good friend, Moria, knows of a tattoo artist and so she took Lea to visit with him. They pretty much talked Lea out of this particular tattoo. They told her SO many people had this tattoo and they didn't want her to get something EVERYONE had. So when she came home we decided that we needed to create one for her. This wasn't an easy task.

Her first tattoo had to be special. The tattoo artist basically told her tattoos are suppose to mean something and this tattoo WAS going to mean something because it is for her Grandma Brinson. Lea and Grandma Brinson are pretty close so Lea wanted her very first one to symbolize Grandma Brinson.

I told her about ambigrams and how cool those are and her boyfriend, DJ, actually designed one but Lea didn't like it at all.

Then we did a lot of looking at pics on the internet and we finally decided on one.

This tattoo is not only special because of Grandma Brinson but because her boyfriend, DJ, created it.

Here it is:

I KNOW the last one is VERY hard to see but we will get better pics and I'm SURE Lea will get them up on her myspace.

One cool thing is that her Grandma Brinson still thinks she is getting the tiger butterfly tattoo. She has NO clue Lea has designed one just for her. So, if you talk with Grandma Brinson NO TELLING!

I now will tell you what this tattoo means.

1) The numeral two symbol is actually the sign of Gemini. That's my mother's zodiac sign

2) The pink ribbon is for breast cancer

3) The initials, CJB, are my mother's initials

4) The numeral two also symbolizes how many times my mother has beat breast cancer. TWICE!

We were going to put my mother's favorite flowers, lilacs, in the middle of it but the tattoo artist said it would just look like a big blob so Lea decided to leave those out.

So? How did she handle this? Well her leg was twitching at one point. Alyssa, Moria, and DJ were laughing because her boob started to twitch also. Lea says it HURTS! Today, October 7th, she is taking advil for the pain. :) She is handling it well though.

One other thing, she also got her nose pierced! She's a glutton for punishment!

This is a pic of her nose ring BUT she did take this one out and she put a tiny pink one in that is barely noticeable. Looks nice.

All in all her 18th was a good one, at least she says it was. She said hardly anyone noticed her nose ring but EVERYONE wanted to see her tattoo. She's proud of both things.

I can't believe she is 18 and an adult.

WOW, I'M GETTING OLD!