Four years ago today I was mad at my husband.

Really mad.

All my friends were at a fun scrapbooking retreat and I wasn’t there. Darrell put his foot down and said, “Absolutely not,” in no uncertain terms. To be fair, I was less than two weeks away from my due date, aka baby could come any time, and, in our labor and delivery experience, it was a pretty fast process. He didn’t want to chance me being an hour away from the hospital.

But I was still mad.

And told him in no uncertain terms that if said baby did not make an appearance during the retreat weekend he was in big trouble. Big.

And then, at 1:30 Sunday morning, 10 days before I was due, I said, “I think we should go to the hospital.”

We packed up, got my Dad to come stay with Molly, headed in to the case room, and 10 minutes after we arrived, so did Gabe, at 2:31 am. My dad didn’t even get a chance to go to sleep when we called to say, “He’s here!”

And he really was here, all  6 lbs. 13 ozs. of blond boy. I wasn’t expecting the blond (Molly was black) and I wasn’t expecting the boy (I was convinced I was having a girl).

But I wouldn’t trade this sweet face for anything.

Happy 4th birthday, my baby. We love you all the way to the moon and back, to infinity and beyond, forever and ever, all the way to the stars.

Mama / S.