Swinging on Birches

"Ward Christopher!!" I hollered up the stairs for what felt like the thousandth time... "If you cannot stop teasing your sister, you are skipping dinner and going straight to bed tonight!  I've had it!" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- During breakfast, a song plays in the cd player.  The singer croons, " And our babies never cry, and we can look you in the eye, and say, 'I'm not afraid to die-e-e-e .'" Elliot: "What's that mean?" Ward: "It means, he's lived a good life and so he's not afraid to die now." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I looked at him a thousand times tonight. I thought about how little he still is, in some ways.  Relentlessly teasing his sister, still struggling to swim; he hasn't even lost a

Right about this time of year, I start freaking out. It's the "pre-birthday" time. Not my birthday (although my own years seem to be passing ohsofast ), but my son's birthday. Six, this year.  Six. This baby that we hoped for and prayed for and wept for. He came.  And he stayed. And he took our lives and shook them up and pushed them forward and took all the breath out of us. And so, as this time approaches each year and our discussions turn to cake and invitations and a couple of special gifts, my heart begins to beat at an incredibly rapid rate and I try and fit just a little bit more into the current age. More outings. More snuggling. More activities. More sitting and staring at him and squeezing him and begging him to please stop growing. I try and sit and listen more when he tells me about the ninja-ship-training station he's made with his Legos and I try harder to come up with creative answers to whether Lego Luke or Lego Obi Wan