The Birthday Boy!

It’s finally here!!

Who says finally when your in your 30’s?

Yeah aparently we do know that Lola is an overly excited birthday enthusiast!

So, yes, we are SO VERY excited to celebrate the greatest guy we know!!

We mostly call him, Lou, daddy and hunnie but today we call him the birthday boy!!

Fair warning, sappy post ahead.

Lay off me, besides EVERY dear Lola that I am left bawling like a baby my only one for Lou is his BIG birthday and then we go right back to Lola on her birthday…

That one may actually not be sappy this year since I plan on crying to the point I won’t even be able to type so let’s just enjoy this sap fest while we can shall we?

To know him is to love him and to know that his way of loving comes with an intense passion for EVERYTHING he does and loves…. His top two fortunetly happen to be myself and Lola.

Lucky us huh, HOORAY!

I remember when we were younger (I refuse to say “young” because were still young… shut it.) Anyway, even then, when we were kids I remember loving that he was such a “kid”. He was a little boy with a passion about everything the way little kids are….

Seeing fast cars was SO exciting… he knew the stats on all of them (he even taught me some to memorize so I could blurt them out and look fancy)! He got excited seeing airplanes fly over and still to this day loves to quiz me and educate Lola on each kind as it flies by.

A snake, a bird, the stars or a rain storm…. he was passionate about it all.

I remember once one of his sisters’ was dating someone that NONE of us liked… regardless, we had all gotten together for some event and Alex spent the majority of that night talking with him, listening and motly asking him questions all about his hobbies, interest and mostly his job.

Mind you this guy was pretty much a creep.

You could tell though, there was no faking it, Lou was genuinely interested in every aspect of the conversation.

I asked him quite confused when we left, “I thought you *(we) didn’t like that guy”?

Turns out he didn’t particularly like him (even still) but I loved that he always put forth effort and managed to find something about EVERYONE that he could connest with the on and find an interest in.

He has a way of making you feel like you are the most special person in the room and that he is completely interested in every aspect of what you are telling him.

For the most part his inuisitve mind really is.

I always joke if you worked somewhere picking u trash everyday he would want to hear all about the process, how it works, what  you like/dislike about it etc.

There isn’t much he isn’t passionate about.

I adore that little boy interest in him so very much and I already see SO much of that in our Lola…. everything is a BIG deal, everything is interesting and everything is something she learns from!

They are quite literaly two peas in a pod.

When I fell in love with this overly silly, confident, smart, carefree and way too comical kid in middle school you couldn’t have told me I would ever love anyone any harder.

Regardles of age, he was the one I wanted forever.

I knew btter than to ever tell a soul that after all I assumed every 13 year old thought they were going to marry their boyfriend (of the week).

In highschool it was quite the same but had been proven a bit more.. I new each one of my friends who’s parents had married their high school sweetheart (which was only about 2- that I stalked) and I just idealized them, I wondered what made them different. Like a creeper I would ask them all about their parents and how hey treated eachother (one in particular that I wasnt even close with besides asking her questons about her parents- im sure she thought i was a real whack job). I needed to know though, how could I make sure that was us.

#creeper

In college I thought everyone must break up with their high school sweetheart to explore the world and other options…. day by day we raced to eachother between every class. Turns out we only wanted eachother more, for longer and forever.

When we got engaged and then married and had moved away to Clemson together I thought it would never get any better than this.

This was what we had waited our whole lives for.

Mind you we had NOTHING else, litrally.

No money, no degrees (well my psychology degree which at the time got me a fancy job as…. a nanny lol) but we knew everything else was just a matter of time.

It would all come in time.

….and it did.

Soon after Lou graduated, I got accepted to grad school, bought a house, graduated from grad school, got “big kid” jobs and thought this was ‘it” all we need know is that baby we have never met but spent the last 10 years waiting to be in this very positon for.

It was as if all of those years when we were doing everything to better ourselves, we never actualy did a thing for ourselves.

We wanted to do it all for her.

We knew the whole time n the back of our minds, each “check mark” was just a step closer to meeting the little girl we had always talked about, dreamed of and pictured in our minds.

(Now you know why we have serious issues and never let you go…. more of that in your “OMG your TWO” blog!)

I always feel bad when I (secretly) compare myself to other moms who have waited SO long to have their babies…. Typically they are referring to fertility issues which is something I don’t even begin to try and imagine or suggest I am similar to by ANY means, I simply just understand wanting something badly and not having it “yet”…..

I think the best way to describe our wait was like having a ten year long pregnancy minus a lot of late night drunkfest in between!

Am I right?

The man I loved more than I thought was humanly possible or healthy quite frankly, who went into the hospital bedside me that Febuary day was not the same man that left.

I had never felt so calm and scared at the same time. Scared because of mostly the unknown, as far as it being a medical procedure and HELLO, our lives were changing forever.

At the same time I had never felt so calm, simply because of him.

He swears I have WAY too much confidence in him because I’m pretty sure that if the medical team had all called in sick that day I would have just assumed we would move right along without them because this guy would figure it all out. lol

He naturally would have shit his pants BUT I honestly feel like there is nothing he can’t figure out or hasn’t learned from the 568 books that pile up on his nightstand weekly.

I will say, you never know how attractive someone can be until they not only take an interest in you and everything about you but they share interest in the one thing you hold deepest to your heart.

That growing baby girl inside you.

I don’t think there was one thing he had not read about in 5 different ways by the time we made it to our 20 week appointment.

Now you are seeing why half the time I walked around like I was on xanax… not a care in the world while here he was probably in dire need to take a damn xanax with the weight of the world on his shoulders yet refused to ever show it!

You have a passion for Lola that is like nothing I ever new was humanly possible.

Before we left the hospital you had list upon list of medication dosages for Lola and myself and times and amounts of what and when they were administered.

You did EVERY diaper change (for us both actually lol) and even after we got home until this day if you aren’t at work you are there for every diaper change, feeding, bathtime and bedtime routine.

You now have TWO temperature gages for her room ( I thought the older she got the more relaxed you would get at least on this…not a chance) and wake up about every hour or two to check the temperature in her room… You also re-google the correct temperature her room should be about every 3 months. Im not sure if you are double checking or if it changes by age but never the less you are pretty neurotic.

You take responsibility, plan and prepare for every single trickling effect of anything that has anything to do with her.

From changing out the carseats the night before we go somewhere,making a midnight run so we have milk in the morning, building babygates at midnight before going to work the next morning to make sure everyones life easier the second she learned to crawl,  charging her tablet for car rides, making constant lists’ at work for diaper cremes, wipes and anything else she or I may need.

You hover over her every move and phsycially stop breathing (from what I have noticed) if i even mutter having a casual stomachache/headache or mention (one of the many) tumbles Lola took in a day.

You have taken it upon yourself to make EVERYTHING your responsibiility.

These are just a few of the reasons I can’t help but to describe your love as passionate for your girls.

You will never quite know just how much I cherish the fact that Lola has no idea how special she is. She has no idea that she got a winner. She has no idea that every daddy isn’t like this.

She has no idea that other kids her age eat blueberries that aren’t smooshed, go to bed without their daddy laying in their crib wth them EVERY night, come home screaming their name and spending every second with them holding their hand, calling them gorgeous and smothering them with kisses.

And unless she growns up to be a scial worker, she will never have to know any dfferent (because you know us social workers see some cray ass shit).

I know you are going to kill me for bragging so much about you but you deserve it Daddy Lou.

Lets be honest no one besides myself and you woud even get this far down anyway (I would actually be surprised if you go this far yourself) but now ou know why you didn’t get  card this year.

For one I did forget… but for two there is just TOO much to say on how much we absolutely adore you.

I say all of this to say, it does not go un-noticed.

You do so very much for us and never ask for anythingin return.  I notice.

Even when I am halfway awake and you have already jumped out of the bed, I notice (actually especially then)

In fact since Lola has been born, I believe this is how you have given me the gretest gift of all.

Not only have you become a person I am proud to call mine you have given me the gift of simply enjoying our daughter.

You have taken it upon yourslf to not only provide for us financially and allow me to spend all my time with her, you have given me the security this anxious mama needed to be calm, feel safe and believe she is safe and simply enjoy her.

So happy birthday to you daddy!

Thank you for being someone we can both look up to daddy Lou. Your kind for no good reason at all, your fair when being fair sucks, your smart and humble at the same time, your work ethic exhause me just htinking bout it, your a sucker for anythign I ask you for and your genuine with everything you do.

I can only hope we have many more birthdays together where I sit here babbling on and on about how I just can’t fathom loving you anymore.

Happy birthday my Lou, my love.