Our 4th Anniversary (and Linc's, too!)

There’s something so exciting to me about the fall. I know spring should feel this way, with all the birth and rebirth, all the unfurling and awakening, all the intrinsically buoying effects of longer days and warmer air and life exploding around me. Spring should be the exciting season, and in some ways it is for me, but spring seems to be about moving outward, about coming out of hiding and stretching your wintery skin to the sun and venturing out away from hearth and home in search of distraction or freedom or whatever it is we look for out there. In the fall, it feels more about circling your wagons, gathering your little ducks close to the nest, wrapping them in warm things and moving closer together to share each other’s warmth. It is the promise of shared rituals on the horizon – the impending holiday season – and smells that remind you of the security of childhood, a security that maybe can never be fully reclaimed but can be remembered when you catch the smell of cinnamon and pumpkin, or when you see your own children in their warm pajamas for the first time in so many months padding in to the kitchen to ask what smells so good. Spring feels like starting out on an adventure, and fall feels like coming home at the end of it, tired, full of thoughts and memories, and aching to see those you have missed.

That smell in the air, that smoky yet clean smell of fall, has always made me introspective and nostalgic in a way that no other season affects me. I couldn’t be more pleased that all my boys have October birthdays because it makes the days between October 1st and January 1st an extended celebration, with birthday season launching us right into the holiday season. And it all kicks of with Linc’s birthday on October 1st.

How perfect, then, that October 1st is also the day each year when we return to the blog, dust off the keyboard, and chronicle a month in the life of our not typical but amazingly normal family. The timing could not be better, as far as I’m concerned. The fall season arrives, Lincoln celebrates another year gone by, and just as we are naturally sort of primed to take stock of the anniversary of his birth (and diagnosis), we get to write it all down and share it with you lovely folks.

Although the Texas weather has thus far refused to participate in any autumnal cooling, the days are getting shorter, witch hats and jack-o-lanterns are out on the shelves of every store, and some mornings if you get out of the house early enough you can just barely smell the telltale Eau de Fall in the air. It may still feel like summer out there, but right here, in our little corner of the internet, it is October through and through. This is a magical time of year for us for so many reasons, not the least of which is the encouragement and support we have received from those who have followed our misadventures from year to year.

I mean, just take a look at what my darling mother made for me last year to commemorate three years of Our Hot Rod Lincoln:

Who could ask for higher praise, am I right? When someone cares enough about our daily ramblings to have them published, when folks inundate us with emails and comments and notes on Facebook to tell us how much the blog means to them, when we run into people we haven’t seen in forever and they tell us they visit the site every morning to check for that day’s post, it… well for once I am running out of words to explain how buoying that is to us.

So welcome or welcome back. Thank for you letting us share how raising Lincoln has changed our lives, and how raising him has kept us dreadfully normal, too.