I’ll never forget being crammed into the tiniest, messiest bathroom together on the last day of our family vacation this summer. Surrounded by a pile of damp towels and bathing suits and a week’s worth of sandy clothes crumpled up on the floor, I handed you the test. Your eyes welled up with tears and mine got wide when those two little pink lines changed our entire world in the matter of seconds. We gasped (quietly, so nobody else in the rental house would hear) and laughed and cried and held onto each other so tight.
The rest of the summer didn’t go quite how we expected, but you handmade me electrolyte drinks, and kept a never-ending supply of crackers by my bedside. You instinctively held my hair when we had to pull over, spent hours upon hours researching the best prenatal vitamins and you were even willing to watch two full seasons of Project Runway with me when I couldn’t get out of bed. You ran out for late night tater tots when it was the only thing I could eat and held my hand during every doctor’s appointment.
And now? You talk to my belly every night and want to take a new picture of me every day (even the days that I don’t feel very picture-worthy) because you tell me I’ve never looked more beautiful. You hand me granola bars every two hours on wedding days and carry all the bags, and then the next day in church, you rest your hand on my stomach throughout the whole service just in case he decides to kick.
You’re already planning the things you want to teach him and the kind of man you want to grow him into, and I get teary-eyed just thinking about how lucky our son’s future wife will be one day. Because he gets YOU as a dad. And today, as we celebrate your birthday together for the fourteenth time, I want to wish a very happy birthday to the man who makes me so excited to raise one. I’ve never loved you more.
