Tomorrow is my birthday. 28 years ago tomorrow I was born in Lexington, Virginia. The day my parents brought me home from the hospital it snowed. But I really don’t remember that little detail.

In fact, I don’t remember much about the first few days, weeks, or months of my life. I don’t think I remember a single detail about that entire year.

That is too bad because now that I am a responsible person who is caring for a little person in his early days, I would love to remember the things that my parents did as they learned to be parents.

Did my mother fall asleep while I was nursing at 2 in the morning? Did my father worry that I would break when he picked me up? I know that they used cloth diapers, so how many a day did they change? Did they change my diaper when it was wet, only to have to change it 5 minutes later after I exploded in my diaper? How many times did I poop or pee on them? (Fuller’s count so far: poop- 2; pee- 7) What techniques did they employ to get me to go back to sleep after I ate?

These are the questions I ask myself on the eve of my 28th birthday. I also wonder what I was like at 5 weeks. Did I make noises in my sleep? Did I startle easily? Was I able to track an object or was I still just interested in staring at the lights? I know I was a good baby, but when I cried, did I squeak like my son?

I don’t have the answers to these questions, but as Fuller grows, I will try very hard to remember the details of these early days, weeks, and months of his life.

Dear Fuller,
When people ask me how old you are, I get to tell them you are 4 weeks old. That means that 5 weeks ago you were still inside of me, kicking and squirming. Now you are out here in the big, wonderful world kicking and squirming. Isn’t it amazing how quickly your life can change?

Just in case you are wondering, this is the obligatory one month letter to my newborn son. As Ferris Bueller said, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” So, let’s look around.

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I have been kind of in a twist about this topic but decided to share it because I would like some sort of feedback.

When Fuller was born our pastor came to visit us in the hospital. He informed me that the traditional meals from the church family would start after my parents finished their visit. Makes sense.. I don’t think that people would want to be making a meal for 6-8 people, especially when some of those people are very capable of cooking while I recovered from the birth experience.

I told him that my parents would be here 2 weeks.

It has now been 2 weeks since my parents left and no meals from the church. This actually doesn’t surprise me because our church has been bogged down lately with organizing meals for people- many people have been having babies (one other baby even shares Fuller’s birthday), there were 2 deaths, and some other needs may have been thrown in the mix too. So it is completely understandable that we may have been forgotten.

Last week I asked D to talk to our Shepherding Elder about this. D did as asked and was told that if we hadn’t heard anything by last Friday to call Elder’s wife. Well, Friday passed and we hadn’t heard anything. I meant to talk to the wife on Sunday, but they left church quickly and I didn’t get a chance.

Now, here is my dilemma: Do I still call the wife and see about getting the meals? Yes, they would help us out (one less thing for me to think about), but is there some sort of statute of limitations on the actual need for the meals?

We are one month into this parenting thing. I have gotten over feeling like I am on vacation and am settling into being a stay at home mom. I have been cooking the food that my mom prepared and froze for us and I have even been to the grocery store to pick up more food and fix some meals from scratch. (Ask D about the awesome bruschetta I fixed on Sunday.)

I think the traditional meals from the church family are for people who need the respite from that one other thing to think about while they are dealing with whatever stress is in their life. I just don’t know if I (we) still fall into this category.

Of course, ask me what we are having for dinner when I have only had 4 hours of sleep. Then I might be begging for someone to come cook for me.

Does anyone have Emeril’s number?