And Now He is Four

It's Nathan's birthday! My baby is 4!

Naturally, I get a little nostalgic on the anniversary of my child's birth. There's the whole flashback to day he was born, the What were we doing four years ago today? reminiscences. And somewhat fittingly, I saw my OB/GYN working out at the gym today. I thought about telling him that four years ago today he was cutting me open and extracting a baby from me, but considering he called me "Sharon" at my last annual exam, I'm thinking we aren't really BFF.

Anyway, it's been a [insert adjective here] four years. Like, seriously, insert any adjective in the world and I could probably find a way to make it work as a description for some portion of the last four years. (It's like Mad Libs!) Joyful, exhausting, frustrating, painful, hilarious, rewarding, degrading ... okay, you know what an adjective is.

Oh and BTW I experienced most of those adjectives just in the past day.

But in the end, this experience is too complicated to articulate. The highs are so high, and the lows are so low. I know my baby isn't perfect, believe me I know, but he's somehow perfect to me. And yet he frustrates me with all his imperfections. He frustrates me with all my imperfections. I love him to pieces, I wouldn't ever want to live without him, but I certainly wouldn't want two of him either. I mourn the end of the first four years of his life, sad that he will never be 1 or 2 or 3 again, but I wouldn't relive those years for all the money in the world.

My experiences with Nathan are just too difficult to put into words. So I'll just show you this picture of my big boy on his new big boy bike today:

Much like motherhood, riding a bike is a balancing act. Unlike motherhood, there are training wheels on a bike.

Happy birthday, my sweet, sweet baby! You are my sun and my moon and my stars.