Birthday Boy

Happy Birthday to Garrett Sprigg, our youngest! He's eight! How in the blue hell did that happen? It seems like it was only yesterday that he was seven. Time flies.

He's much like his older brother Ashton; they are both heavily into toy trains, especially (in Garrett's case) Thomas trains. He got a nice set tonight, and all three of the boys were upstairs playing with it. It's great to see them being brothers together.

We had a nice little birthday party for him here, just the five of us. It was great to see Garrett react when we lit the birthday candles and started singing Happy Birthday. He grinned from ear to ear; it was the first birthday that he's ever done that. He understood what we were doing! That is such a great feeling for parents of an autistic child. My wife was almost crying. He isn't quite there on how to blow out candles, but he was very enthusiastic about ripping open the presents. He got some Thomas, a puzzle book, a bag of chips all to himself, and a toy tractor. All in all, quite the haul for a brand-new eight-year-old.

When we first found out we were expecting him, I started writing a daily journal for him. I kept it faithfully for two and a half years, but I made the mistake of storing it on a single flash drive. One night, I left it on the dining room table; Raven, our black lab, ate it. I lost the whole thing.

I wish I had it; it would have been so amazing to be able to read that now, looking back on those early days when we didn't even know if our baby would be a boy or a girl. And I had the whole day of his birth written out, hour by hour. And now it's gone.

I couldn't go on writing the journal after that; losing those precious early years was too painful. I regret that, now; I wish I had continued it, even missing those first three years. It would have been a great record of his life, and the lives of the people around him. But, it is what it is. There's nothing I can do about it now. We have him, and we have the memories, and that will do.

Now, off to watching the boys play some more. Time to be a Dad.