Birthday Present

I know, I haven't updated in forever. Consolation is that I have a huge pile of post-it notes piling up with little reminders about stories of the kids that I want to tell, so one day I'll get around to a big post with 47 outdated stories that I want to remember.

But this morning was enough to make me at least get back on here and start doing this again.

Today is my birthday, and I wasn't overly happy about turning 29 for the 8th year in a row. I got out of bed around 7:30, and had heard Aaron playing around in the hall for 10 minutes or so(which he's not supposed to do), but he was being quiet enough, so I kind of ignored it. The first thing I do on weekdays is open my bedroom door to see if Aaron's awake and say good morning, today being no exception.

I open the door and see Aaron with his pillow-chair pulled into the hallway, surrounded by his "aminals", with a couple of books to keep him occupied until I woke up. My opening the door made him start a little bit, and then he immediately broke out into a huge smile and sang me a lovely version of Happy Birthday. I sat down in my doorway in front of him to listen. When he finished, he told me that all of his aminals were there because it was my birthday party. "And, I have a present for you, but I wasn't allowed downstairs while you were sleeping so I didn't have anything to wrap it. So I put it in my lunchbox so you could open it and have it be a surprise."

He gave me his set of whiteboard markers and his foam baseball with the promise that he would play with me whenever I want.

And then my heart burst into a million little pieces that I had to pick up before going on with the rest of the day.