Memorial Day

Memorial Day is, of course, a weekend for rememberance.

In our case, we remember the weekend that Winston came to stay with us, and he and Steve had too much too drink and sat on our back porch howling (no, really howling like wolves) at the noisy kids partying somewhere across the brook. And then, then next morning, at 7am, I woke Steve up and told him we had to go to the hospital because I was having a baby, and Steve drove me there, even though he probably shouldn't have been driving at all. And then, because of complications, we were both transported my ambulance to a bigger, better hospital in Boston, and I had twelve hours of labor, which Steve endured smelling like beer, unshowered, unshaven. Perhaps he felt woozy at the harsh reality of a child being born and a woman in labor and all the wonderful fluids involved. Or perhaps he was a bit hung over. We'll never really know.

Anyway, Nicholas was born on Memorial Day weekend, two whole weeks early.

We celebrated Nicholas's Third Birthday yesterday, even though it's a bit early. For weeks, if not months, all he's said he wanted was a tractor. I looked everywhere for the perfect, non-battery powered gift. I finally ordered it off the internet. It arrived Thursday. Steve managed to put it together in record time despite those horrendous instructions composed entiredly of badly drawn pictures. I put on one sticker but did a bad job, so Steve even did those.

I think Nick likes it. He seemed calm, but he insisted on showing every single person who came by his tractor.