Darren's 5th

Today is D Dog’s birthday. My middle child has turned five. What can I say about Darren the Baron? He is built in the exact opposite ways of his brothers as he is skin and bones. He eats like a horse and never gets full (or gains weight). Some of his mannerisms remind me of his cousin on Bruce’s side of the family. They also share the same build. If Bruce says the sky is blue, Darren will say that it is red. Bruce likes the Cleveland Browns, so Darren has to like the Cincinnati Bengals. He will test much better than his brother at the kindergarten screening at the end of the month.

The current warm spell we are having reminds me of the weather five years ago. I may not have been in the 70’s, but it was definitely a sunny 60 degrees plus out. One year and one day ago I was sitting on our front porch with Bruce and Nathan just enjoying the warm weather. I was overdue a couple of days at that point and was curious as to how overdue I would get before my doctor would induce me. Bruce gets up to go talk to the neighbor across the street and Nathan gets up to follow. An almost three year old can move a lot faster than a nine months pregnant Mom, and by the time I caught up to him Nathan was almost on the street. To this day, I am not sure if I tripped, if I tackled Nathan to prevent him from crossing our busy street or if the momentum of my belly just knocked us over. We rush to the hospital and Bruce takes Nathan to see if he needs stitches in his forehead while they put a fetal monitor on me to make sure the baby is alright. We call my Mom in route to the hospital in case she needed to come and get Nathan. Luckily Carla was working at the hospital at this time and after a phone call from Mom, she goes to the ER to check on Nathan and Bruce. Then she sits with Nathan while Bruce comes to check on me.

Eventually I go into labor and deliver Darren later the next afternoon. All three of my boys were easy babies, but Darren was probably the ‘hardest’ of the three. He would spit up all the time, for the first week he would not sleep more than an hour or two at a stretch until I started letting him sleep on his belly. I know that is strongly discouraged, but as soon as he slept on his belly, he slept thru the night. He had to be admitted to NICU at Children’s a few hours after being brought home from the hospital (it was later determined that nothing was wrong). Anyway, I hope you have a happy birthday D!!!