Happy Birthday, Asher!

A year ago today, I was standing at the window of the nursery in a hospital in El Paso, trying to deduce which baby was to become my son. There were families of other babies peering into the nursery and one asked me, "which one is yours?" I had to respond, with a little chuckle as I saw their facial expression, "I ... I don't know." I would soon meet up with Becca and Asher's birth family to meet my son for the first time.

Asher had decided to enter this world on his own terms. Instead of a Tuesday induction, his birthmother went into labor Sunday. With a scramble to get a ticket and get to the airport (I had stayed home to work while Becca and Riley went to El Paso to await his birth), Sunday had gone by in a blur. He was on his way. I got into El Paso around midnight and Asher's birth grandfather picked me up and we headed downtown to the hospital. I met up with Becca and Riley and since Becca was staying for the birth, I took Riley back to the hotel so she could sleep.

Sometime in the deep of the night, the phone rang. In one of those, "where am I, why am I being woken up, and where is that darn phone?" moments, I picked it up and Becca simply said, "He's here [drawn out a little bit - in my mind it has morphed a little into 'they're here' in Poltergeist]". I don't remember if she said anything else (I was a little out of it of course), but I remember thinking, "uh, what should I do - jump into action and get to the hospital? Oh, wait, throttle down. I have a little girl sleeping." Instead, I smiled and slipped back into unconsciousness thinking "He's here! He's here!". It was surreal. To me, it was the most anticipated event in a while, and he is here!

I woke up early, took a shower, and tried to distract myself (ok, staring at Riley sleeping and trying to send telepathic messages to get her to wake up) until we could go to the hospital. And there I was, standing at the window of the nursery, trying to pick out which baby was to become my son. No, not that one with the pink paper. That's a girl. No, not that one, all the other people at the window are ogling over him. I narrowed it down to two babies. And then I found out that he was neither - he was in the hospital room the whole time. But then I held him for the first time, looked at his sleeping face, smelled his smell, felt his warmth, smiled, and thought, "He is here!"

It's fun to see him grow. It's fun to see him tease us when we tell him to not touch something and he gets this wicked grin with a look of, "what are you going to do about it? Pick me up? Because I would love that too." It's awesome to come home and he knows, before he sees me, that I'm home from work and he says, "hey, Da!" It's a nice way to wake up when he is in his room saying, "dad-dee!" or he hears me open my bedroom door and knows I'm coming and starts jumping up and down in his crib saying "dad-dee." I love that little boy (not so little anymore - he weighs almost the same as Riley). He's our little bulldozer, our little bulldog. And we love him. Happy birthday, Asher!