Happy 28th Birthday to Our Baby

Yesterday, our youngest son turned 28.  That’s unfathomable to me, because that’s about when it seems he was born--yesterday or maybe the day before...my goodness, where do the years go?! (I'm sure I've said that about a million times on this blog already; but it bears repeating.)

Here's a picture of our boy yesterday, getting ready to eat a funfetti cake baked from scratch by his wife of about 16 months. 

And here's another picture of him...also taken yesterday.

This kid...every mother should have one like him.  I mean that.  And I am not biased.  (I'm not!)  I'm not seeing him through rose-colored glasses when I say that he has been the most loving and devoted son his whole life, and that his enthusiasm for being a member of our family--with four older brothers he always looked up to and adored--has never flagged, even a little bit.  In a way, he was born an old soul; even when he was a wee lad, he had a manner about him that made more than one person ask him if he thought he might one day be a priest.  (God had other plans for him, however.)  I just adore him, and I'm thrilled that he found a wife who seems to feel the same way about him as his mommy does.

I'm going to tell a quick story about the kind of boy he was.  When he was 12, he suddenly developed SVT (supraventricular tachycardia): an extra electrical pathway in his heart that had probably always been there but had been dormant suddenly came into use, causing his heart to beat at an alarmingly fast rate.  Not all the time, but definitely after any kind of physical exertion and even sometimes out of the blue.  He could have gone on heart medication for life, but that was not deemed the best way to treat the condition.  So he underwent a procedure called a catheter ablation, the purpose of which was to zap that extra pathway and put it out of commission so his heart rate would remain stable.  The first attempt at an ablation didn't work, so he went on medication; then the following year, his doctor attempted the ablation again.  This time, it was completely successful, and our boy left the hospital completely cured of SVT.  It was as if he'd never had it at all.  Thank God for modern medicine!

Anyway, waiting as your beloved child undergoes another heart procedure--even one that is not as invasive as traditional surgery and is considered a same-day procedure, where he can go home as soon as he recovers from the anesthesia--is extremely nerve-wracking, obviously.  And we were so thrilled to see him afterward!  But before we could say anything to him, this extraordinary 13-year-old boy, still groggy from the drugs, asked his dad and me, "How are you guys doing?" He knew how worried we were, and he was more worried about us than he was about himself.

How's that for a "mom brag" tale?  But isn't he the sweetest?  Can you see why I just adore him?

This is the boy who came along almost exactly five years after the youngest of our first four boys was born.  He was a delightful surprise, and I'll tell you, God definitely knew that our family was not complete without him.  

Happy Birthday, sweetie!  We can't wait to celebrate with you in person soon!