fourteen.

he showed up squalling and pink-wrinkled beautiful and the best thing i'd ever seen. and when, two days later, the hospital sent us on home i kept thinking, are you sure? you're seriously trusting us with an actual human being?

and fourteen years later we still don't know what we're doing, and this boy, our firstborn, he's patient and easy as he walks us through the finer steps of growing toddlers and fifth graders and teenagers.

he's a bunch of exuberance under sometimes-shy, and pesters and nurtures his siblings in equal parts. he's cautious, quickly bruised, responsible. he blooms this smile, warm and quick, like july.

we're bent toward expecting too much of him at every age, and it's a miraculous, beautiful thing to watch him flourish in spite of all the holes in our so-called parenting. he's growing straight up in love with Jesus.



happy birthday, b. you're the best kind of wonderful.