Happy Birthday

Dear AJ,

The fact that you texted me the other day, grousing about turning 25, set me on my heels a bit. I clearly remember your birth in Atlanta. I just don't do numbers very well. How could you be 25 when I'm 25 (in that parallel universe known as my head)?

Just think of all that you've accomplished at your quarter-century mark: Warhawk of the Week (okay, I may have reached back a little too far with that one), swim team captain, nursing school graduate (with honors), Intensive Care Unit nurse at a St. Louis hospital, cat and dog owner, home owner, affianced, splendidly busy and happy in ways I never dreamed for you.

Go, you.

I can remember the year we moved to Naperville because it was the year you were born. Your sister was just starting morning Kindergarten. Given your Dad's job and the way thing were in corporate America in the 1980s, I figured we'd be outta here in 18 months.

Thanks to all that is holy, we were able to stay in one place, raise our family, plant bulbs in the garden and put down roots in a community that has sustained all of us. (And Naperville Now is an awesome and alliterative blog name, so the Internet had to have had a hand in it.)

And here we still are.

Wish you were, too.

Have an awesome birthday, my girl, with cake and candles and all our love (and a card that the postal guy says may get there Saturday. I hate that when that happens. Glad I had the foresight to send you back after Christmas with birthday gifts, which I know you have saved until tomorrow to open. You did save them, right?)

Love and happy birthday,

Mom