A Lot Can Happen In Two Years: Like, 24 months can just fly by!

Two years ago today, I was totally ignoring Big V chow down on a slice of pizza because I was busy cracking up via text messages with my sister. For Christmas I hope she gets me a transcript from our phone records because that conversation was epic!

I look totally okay with this whole giving birth thing. Don't I?

I was scheduled to deliver a baby and things were going pretty well - I was laughing, V was eating - when all of a sudden a team of health specialists stormed my room and in twenty-five seconds had me racing down the hall for an emergency c-section. All I heard was trouble with his heart and dangerously low level and so your dad is from Australia? (That last one coming from the super spunky anesthesiologist who gave me my epidural about 45 minutes earlier.)

 

Someone's a little too giddy to get into surgery.

So cesarean it was! Big V was in charge of pictures. I wanted one the second the baby was born... I am now the proud owner of a pictorial play-by-play of the opening of my gut and filleting of my body fat. It's good stuff.

 

I remember they had trouble "getting him out." Essentially he was stuck under a rib or something and the act of dislodgement shook the entire table. I don't want you to break him! I screamed out. I wish you could see what your body looks like! It's so gross! announced Big V. (He was my hero.)

He smelled as sweet as he looks.
After they bathed him, I mean.

As it was, the baby was a HE. (Phew! Big time.) And he was fine. I didn't know that in the moment, though. Instead I was yelling at Big V to go with the baby! Go with the baby! because I was scared they'd lose him. They didn't. (Although there have been some days in the recent past where I wondered if perhaps there might have been a more pensive child we could have switched with.)

It seems so cliché but, yeah, they grow up in the blink of an eye. He's now this little man housemate with quirky habits and the insistence that he walk around in shoes not belonging to him. He jibber-jabbers like he's having these intellectual conversations with us except the only words we understand is moo, Mimi, and bees? which is always a question. Always.

"Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm late for a meeting."

He is incredibly loving, which means he totally takes after his father. He gives big, squishing bear hugs, blows kisses and has just learned how to kiss a lady's hand. And a man's hand. And the hand of the strange woman waiting in line behind us at the post office.

He also bites, which means he totally takes after his mother.

Happy 2 years on this earth, Buddy!

He is temperamental and sweet and obstinate and charming and, well, just about everything you would imagine a child of two years to be. (And he's been working really hard on the obstinate part.)

In short, I wouldn't trade him for all the world. He is the epitome of Alan Marshall Beck's description:

Boys are found everywhere --

on top of,

underneath,

inside of,

climbing on,

swinging from,

 running around

or jumping to.

 

Mothers love them,

little girls hate them,

older sisters and brothers tolerate them,

adults ignore them

and Heaven protects them.

 

A boy is

Truth with dirt on its face,

Beauty with a cut on its finger,

Wisdom with bubble gum in its hair

and the Hope of the future with a frog in its pocket.

 

A boy is a magical creature;

you can lock him out of your workshop,

but you can't lock him out of your heart.

You can get him out of your study,

but you can't get him out of your mind.

Might as well give up.

He is your captor,

your jailer,

your boss

and your master.

A freckled-faced,

pint-sized,

cat-chasing

bundle of noise.

But when you come home at night

with only the shattered pieces of your hopes and dreams,

he can mend them like new with two magic words:
Hi, Dad!