Two decades of MTD

Today is Michael's birthday. He is 20. That hardly seems possible, seeing as I'm as young as I think I am...

Twenty years ago, some very crazy people let me leave the hospital with a baby. Apparently they thought I knew what I was doing. They were very, very wrong.

But thanks to the sweet guidance of the two best grandmothers in the business, I figured the baby thing out. For instance, my mom taught me to always change the diaper after a nap. (Related: always put something over a boy baby when changing his diaper.) This felt like a major news flash. Of COURSE you’d change the diaper after a nap. Why didn’t I think of that?

Oh, right –because I never babysat and I was all of 23 years old when we brought baby Michael home. I seriously knew nothing about bringing up babies.

But over that past 20 years, Sean and I have worked together, with a whole lotta help, to figure out the baby stage. Then the little kid stage. Then the big kid stage. Then the preteen stage, the teen stage, and now we’re working on the grown child stage. The learning curve is steep and we trip and fall quite a bit, but we are slowly figuring out this one, too.

Michael, thanks for being our guinea pig. For being patient with us when we made new rules that turned out to be dumb. For realizing we really were doing our best and for not holding any of that stuff against us. Also, thanks especially for not being really ticked that Rebecca has way fewer rules than you did.

You were a joy as a baby. You were a joy as a child and you were a joy as a teen. We look forward to this new stage of you as a young man. We are certain we will look back on this stage with great fondness, too.

Happy birthday, Michael-man.

Third birthday party - see Jordan and Caroline on your right!

You as Buzz Lightyear - the plastic lid was over one of my meals at the 

hospital when I was there to deliver Rebecca. Yes, we washed it.

You and Rebecca - you loved your baby sisters, after you 

figured out they were here to stay.

Birthday #6!

Our first fall in Michigan.

With the Chandler cousins.

April 2014. Remember when I used to be able to ask y'all to pose 

and you'd just, oh, I don't know, pose like normal people?