Five years ago today, at this very minute, Susan and I were camped out at the hospital awaiting the arrival of our first child. To the hospital, Susan brought her favorite pajamas and pillow. I brought a duffle bag filled with clothes, a second bag filled with snack food, my laptop, 200 DVD movies, CDs, my Gameboy, and various other odds and ends — none of which got any use that day (except of course, the laptop — I had pictures of Mason online five minutes after his birth). It’s funny that I brought so many things to the hospital that day; once Mason was born, all I wanted to do was hold him in my arms and look into his eyes. That is, until he started screaming in the middle of the night, at which point we tossed him back into that plastic tupperware bin of a crib and begged the nurses to whisk him away to the nursery, desperate for just one more night of uninterrupted sleep. I love my little man as much as I did that first day, maybe even more — which is funny, as I don’t think a day has gone by that he hasn’t screamed at the top of his lungs just like he did that first night. Some things never change. Happy 5th, little man.
