Sam is chipping away at his 30’s, by golly, and today he is another day older and closer to death. Here are just a few of the things that about Sam that make it a little easier to put up with him after more than a decade...
When Linc was born and Sam got the diagnosis, Sam insisted on running back to the recovery room ahead of the doctor to give me the news. He wanted me to hear it from someone I loved, and so he took on the horrible task of breaking me wide open. And it wasn’t just that he gave me the news himself, it was what he said:
"He’s beautiful and perfect and the doctor thinks he may have Down syndrome."
When Linc was in the NICU, Sam would work all night and then stop by the hospital to sit with Linc and read him “The Hobbit”. Some nights, Sam couldn’t even hold him because he could only be held for a certain amount of time, and Sam wanted to save it all for me in the morning.
Sam worked tirelessly to put me through school, and when I would get frustrated, instead of saying, “Hey, I’m working my butt off here, and you are complaining about a bad grade?”, he would just encourage me, thank me for working for our future, and tell me he was proud of me. He would brag to everyone about my grades and help me proofread all my papers. He even started paying attention to the Longhorn games a little, he was so proud of me.
When Linc started therapy with Early Intervention, Sam volunteered to take on the bulk of the therapy work we would be doing between appointments, and he takes his job as Linc’s therapist very seriously. He is even patient with me for not working as hard on the therapy as I should.
When doing laundry, Sam regularly puts Nico’s clothes in Linc’s dresser and vice versa. Often, when he dresses the boys, he puts Nico’s huge socks on Linc and completely mismatching clothes on both kids. BUT... it is really actually quite endearing, and to balance that out, Sam realized that I was never going to start cooking gourmet meals for the family and so he decided he would. He started watching the Food Network and throwing around cooking terms. Where once he would call me to ask how long to heat up leftovers in the microwave, now it takes him 45 minutes to make cole slaw because he has to get it just right.
Although he isn’t cheerful about it, Sam gets up in the night more than half the time to feed Lincoln. He may be a zombie, he may not do it just the way I would, but he does it night after night. He lets me sleep in when he can, and he works so hard to keep the kids quiet when he does. On the rare occasion that Linc refuses to sleep, the only thing that will make him happy is to curl up on his daddy’s chest. He wants nothing to do with me those nights; only Sam will do.
When Sam sits down with Nico to work on letters and spelling, their vocabulary consists of words like "jedi" and "star wars". Like everything else, it may not be what I would have chosen, but he is there everday, doing it his way. He is here, with his family, chipping away at his thirties, instead of being out all night with the guys or wrapped up one football game after another on t.v. And though we are grateful for it everyday, on his birthday my mind goes to all of the things that make him our favorite old man.
Happy Birthday, baby!
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