24!

Wow -- 24 -- no, not the TV show (though I've heard it's great), but my oldest son, Philip, turns 24 on February 28! Happy Birthday to You! Hard to believe that it's been that long since he was born on a really warm spring-like day that year. And, being the Midwest, it was snowing a few days later when we headed home. He weighed in at just over 9 pounds. Before he was born, my OB predicted I would have a 7 pound baby girl! The doc said he was NOT going to make predictions ever again after he was so wrong that time! :)

Ahhhh -- the first-born -- the things we didn't know when he was a baby! I constantly worried that he had a fever. That poor kid had his temp taken more times that first month than probably in his whole life! And there were no ear thermometers back then! ;) But, oh my, he was such a wonderful baby, even though I don't think he slept through the night until he was almost a year old!

Philip at 7 years old and Connor at 5 -- such cuties!!!

He had a few minor medical issues through the years including those dreaded ear infections and ear tubes. The tubes left a hole in his eardrum that had to be surgically repaired not once, but twice. Then one summer when he was swimming a lot, I was determined to keep that ear dry, so I put drying ear drops in every day. When I took him to the doc after he complained his ear hurt, the pediatrician looked at it and said, "That's strange, his eardrum is so dry, it's about to burst!" Ooops -- sorry about that!

And all of sudden, in the blink of an eye it seemed, he was grown up. He graduated from high school and then from college (those high school and college years go by so fast)! And now, he's in his second year of medical school. Last May he got married and we added his sweet wife Catherine to our family. It's been a wonderful 24 years and we look forward to many fun times in the years ahead.

Happy Birthday Sweetie!