Our boy turned five years old on Sunday and we brought him home five years ago today during that Valentine’s Day blizzard…some of you will remember it. The doctor who was to discharge us couldn’t get out of her driveway to come to the hospital for rounds. We waited patiently at first, but with a growing concern as the snow piled higher and higher and hour after hour passed. We should have been discharged and on our way by 7:30…by 10:30, the nurses became as concerned for our drive home as we were. We wound up being discharged without benefit of a doctor’s final checkup…the nursing staff knew we had been through this twice before, and were confident in our judgement. We were finally on our way around 11:30am, van plowing through several inches of snow on a ride that took us nearly 35 minutes (typically ten minutes door to door) with our brand new sweet baby boy wearing his little knit blue cap with red hearts on it…a gift from the nursing staff.
I have always called him our Missing Piece. Before he came along I used to have this overwhelming feeling that someone was missing. I wondered if I would always feel that way, having miscarried our first baby. I thought that perhaps I was destined to always have a little hole there, a nagging feeling that someone was missing. But then along came Mister, filling the hole in our family that I always knew was there, and have never felt again. He was the missing piece in our family puzzle…not only does he fit, but he makes us complete.

Just a few months old:

And of course, now: