Austen Has a Long-Lost Twin Named Charlie
I got hooked on a little pregnant back when I was, well, pregnant. Julie was due exactly two months after me, and it was fun and interesting to follow her pregnancy as I lived and wrote about my own. Needless to say, I was shocked when her son Charlie was born three days before Austen instead of two months after him.
I've been amazed to discover, despite Charlie's prematurity and attendant health issues, how much the two kids have in common. Although Austen doesn't eat at Friendly's regularly (it was one of our first meals out after he was born, but the service at the Friendly restaurants in our area is so abysmal that we don't bother anymore), almost everything in this post could be said of Austen as well. He is SO much more outgoing than either Al or I. It's one of the things I love about him, one of the ways in which he's made my life better—I'd be far more surly, far less interactive, far more awkward and fumbling if Austen weren't by my side, trying to engage every single person he sees.
I know it's New Year's, not Thanksgiving, but I just want to say how thankful I am that I got such a wonderful kid for a son—and how thankful I am that Julie did, too.