BIG DAY TODAY!!!

Today is a big day!!!  For me, it was the day, years ago, I thought "Hmmm, maybe I better try growing up today!"  Of course, 45 years later that thought still hasn't come to fruition BUT the event of that day forever changed my life!! 

Today is our oldest son, Mike's, birthday!!!!  Mike is the amazing person who originally made me a Mother!!  Thank you Mike!!  I was 20 years old when I had Mike and I had never held a baby before!!  He was our experimental baby.  My Mom and Dad were thrilled to finally have a boy in the family - and we gave him the name that my Dad always wanted to use on each of his 4 daughters, had they turned out to be boys of course!!  Long before Mike was born my dad got a dog and named him Mike.  But it was just not enough.  My sisters and I used to have discussions in the back seat of the station wagon, which of us would have a baby boy first and get to name it Michael Barry Boyle.  Well, I won, and of course his last name is Richmond (just doesn't sound the same as Dad's chosen name) but Michael Barry Richmond was born!  And ADORED!!!  My Mom and Dad were scared to death to leave this bundle of joy in my care!!!  My God, this idiot had never even held a baby let alone done anything else for one.  So at the beginning, they would be over at our house every evening to help get him ready for bed and my Mom would be back every morning to make sure he survived the night!!!

Ye of little FAITH!!  I did fine!!!  NOT!!!  I needed all the help I could get.  Connie was my constant companion, it was summer, she was 15, and although she probably never had much to do with babies, she was already more prepared than I was.  Michael was the focus of the whole Boyle family.  He was around my Mom and Dad so much that in the beginning when he started to talk, he called my Mom - Mom!!!  Such a cutie, blond hair with curls, big brown eyes, a smile that could always make you smile and fortunately for me, a very good baby.

He loved baseball at a very early age, still does!  Loved music, still does!!  Loved reading eventually and he still does!!!  He's such a good person - caring, thoughtful, funny, sarcastic to a fault, loves the memory of our family life with his Grandma and Papa and the Richmond side of our family, has friendships that he's had for years, is a wonderful Father to his 4 sons and a son that we are very proud of.

All in all, I think we'll keep him!!!  Unfortunately he really does not like to celebrate his birthday, and I, of course, want a big celebration.  But he suffers through me singing the whole Happy Birthday to You song (probably because of my singing) and will let us have a birthday cake tomorrow night when the kids come over.  So, I guess that's celebration enough for him.

Here's a picture of him today with his 4 boys - Matt, 13, Joe almost 12, Zach, 9 and Benji 5.  He's really trying to instill in his boys a love a baseball and I see it happening.  He worked so hard for all of them this summer.  Out at the baseball park for so many games.  I think it was all worth it.

Bottom line, I LOVE YOU MIKE!!!  I think now that you have kids of your own you probably have a sense of how much I do Love You!!

Message to leave you with today:  Babies, they will change for life, ALWAYS FOR THE GOOD!!!

Until next time . . .