Copycat.

Anne at Archie's Room wrote this:

Archie’s birthday is only two weeks away, and I always find myself comparing how much we know now to how much we could only guess at back then, in those final few days before Archie was born.

We were eager to meet our baby, but we were scared, too. He was an ultrasound image then, a fetal echocardiogram, a chromosomal analysis. He was a medical anomaly, one about whom our doctors made predictions and we postulated based on preconditions. We knew we’d love him, this baby of ours, and we believed in his potential, but we wanted to know him, too.

Now we know a little boy who thinks bicycle shops are cool and says as much, and for that we are the luckiest people in the world. We’ve learned about him, and he’s taught us about ourselves, and I don’t know where we’d be without Archie and his open heart and able mind. Six years later on an October afternoon while driving down the road toward our house, toward our home, I can tell you that I decided that this oldest boy of ours is more than we’d ever hoped for, that he’s the prescription for our perspective.


What she says sums up what Rourk and I were thinking on Monday night as we were sitting back watching Ryan celebrate his 6th birthday. It was just us, just the four of us sitting around the kitchen table singing Happy Birthday over and over and over again. We had chocolate cake, Ryan's favorite, and chocolate ice cream, a runner-up to the cake and presents and lots of laughter. And there was the silence that Rourk and I shared as we watched our children play and these few words that I spoke, "I sure wish we could have known then what we know now about Ryan." Rourk agreed and that was all that had to be said as we left each other to contemplate the birth of our oldest child.