Happy Birthday, Dave!

Eighteen years ago in August, my life changed.  I know you’re mentally calculating and saying, “Wait a minute, David just turned seventeen today, what’s this about eighteen years ago?”  I know my friend Sue is reading this with a smile, because she got pregnant on the same night that I did and we always laugh at the memory.  Ok, so technically it was nine months before today, but you get the idea.

David and Sue’s son, Alex, were born exactly a week apart, down to the exact minute of their birth.  Alex arrived first, and I went nuts for an entire week waiting for David to make his arrival into the world.  David was born by cesarean, thanks to a doctor who I suspect was simply impatient to get back to his rounds.  I ended up with an allergic reaction to the epidural and broke out in hives, which the doctor blamed on the hospital sheets.  It wasn’t until I had the same reaction to Lauren’s birth and a different doctor, that we realized the epidural medicine was the cause.

As a kiddo, David was my Energizer Bunny, and I’m always so thankful that he was my first born because I had the energy back then to keep up with him.  Both Grandmas often handed him back with a sigh after babysitting him, they were exhausted just chasing him around.   I can remember many battles of stuffing him in his car seat and hoping that he’d stay in one place but only to turn around and find him dancing in the back of the van.  I can’t even begin to count the many times that I lost him in the mall while shopping with Sue.  Alex would be sitting contentedly in his stroller and we’d have to take off yet again to hunt for David.

In the photo above, we had just returned home from the hospital after getting six stitches.  David was riding around on Joe’s back and fell off.  He landed kaput into the corner of a Lego model that he had just put together.

When Lauren came along, David was the ultimate big brother.  He did everything with his sister in tow.  I think one of the reasons he likes to cook today is because we spent so much time making cookies and brownies just to keep him in one place for a few minutes.  The most memorable moment was the time that he and Lauren ran their crayons all over the kitchen wall and the day that he threw a brand new book into the bathtub.

By the time Steven came along, David was the helpful older brother and the Energizer battery started to wind down a little bit.  I say just a “little bit,” because he would still do stuff that would make my hair stand on end, like the time that he put the slide on top of the picnic table so that he could “get a better ride into the pool.”

So Happy Birthday to my seventeen-year-old– I cannot believe that you are just one year away from being an adult and soon to fly off to college.  It’s been seventeen amazing years and I’m looking forward to watching you grow even more.