Two Birthday Boys, a Week Apart

Today is the 30th birthday of my fourth-born son: a sweet, sensitive, intelligent, hard-working fella with a hilariously offbeat sense of humor, who is at once one of the most mature and responsible people you will ever meet but at the same time still just a great big kid.  He must be so happy that he is the father of five-month-old babies (triplets!), because now his love of all things Pokémon can seem like just something he's into because of his kids. :)  And I can almost imagine him being the one to wake them up on Christmas morning in the years to come--he was ALWAYS the first one up in our house!--if they even dare to think of "sleeping in" past 2:00 a.m. ;)

Here he is at four.  (Sniff!)  Look at those cheeks!

Son #4 has taken to the role of father of multiples like a duck to water, and I am so proud of him that I can't even put it into words.

It shouldn't surprise me, though.  After all, he was always so good with his younger brother, who came along almost exactly five years after him.  He was very protective of our baby, and so happy to have someone with whom to share his love of toys when the older boys had moved on to other interests.

Here the brothers are in 1993 (or yesterday, whatever).

And on Christmas in 2016.

I didn't get around to blogging on son #5's birthday a week ago (because I am the worst at keeping up with this blog these days), so here's a belated shout-out to him, too.  He's a truly wonderful guy who has grown up to be a sweet, sensitive, intelligent, hard-working fella (you might see a pattern here), and whose dry sense of humor closely resembles that of the older brother he always strove to emulate.  He is in the military, an officer who is currently stationed overseas, and he is dating a very nice gal he met on CatholicMatch.com--no surprise that he decided to go on there, since the site led directly to the marriages of three of his older brothers (and indirectly to the marriage of a fourth).

My baby is a talented writer (and that's not just a mother's bias talking there) and has always had a passion for the movies.  He has started a blog called the Layman's Movie Corner, and you should click on the handy link I embedded there and check it out. It's fantastic.

I'm going to have to wrap this up, because I have a full day of Grammy-ing ahead of me: first babysitting for son #3's two older children while his wife takes their baby for her two month well-baby check-up, and then later babysitting for the triplets so that son #4 and his wife can go out for a birthday dinner date.  It's a busy life here in VA, and it becomes more obvious every day that we were meant to leave our house in NH and move here, where we can be a part of the daily lives of our kids and their growing families.

So, that's the way it is here at String of Pearls...as of today, I have four sons who are IN THEIR THIRTIES, and my youngest is 25!!  Yikes, I can't even believe that.  How in the world did we get here?  I can still remember chubby little lads running around the house in nothing but diapers as if it was just last week.  Life is much too short, I tell ya.

Squeeze those babies of yours, mamas.  Enjoy every minute.  (Well, maybe not every minute!  Some of those minutes are just not that enjoyable, let's be honest--sometimes bedtime can't come soon enough; but you know what I mean.)

Happy Birthday to two of the finest men I have ever had the honor to know.  The fact that I once grew you inside of me, that I was your very first home...well, God has blessed me more than I ever deserved to be blessed, that's for sure.  [Heart-eyed emojis all over the place.]