My family had all kinds of complications in relationships. I would like to meet
the person who did not. Since when is being absolutely perfect what being a
human is? What do we gain from that? -Anthony Edwards
I’m not sure who Anthony Edwards is, but I’m sure he would understand my daughter. Today is my daughter’s birthday. Lauryn is a healthy, vibrant, opinionated, and highly complicated little 3 year old. It’s on her birthday that Starr and I often remind each other of the CODE RED hospital moment in her first week of life. She just up and stopped breathing, little stinker! Watching one’s daughter hooked up to machines, and sitting in an ICU can be a life-changing moment. For this dad, I settled with God on that night that I would never take for granted the life within each of my children. I learned that each and every day was a gift from God, and that even if tomorrow isn’t promised I know that the the very moment I’m living in is. She pulled through it miraculously and it’s been such a long time ago, that it’s easy to forget the day.
Lauryn is my third kid, and my only daughter. She is easily the most complicated kid I have ever been around. It is like wrestling a bear to get her to do something that isn’t her own idea. She makes everything from hair combing, putting her head on a pillow at night, and where she sits at the dinner table a complicated undertaking. Her brothers are the polar opposites in every way, willing to settle for whatever Mom or Dad suggest or command; but Lauryn has a nasty independent streak that goes mostly undetected in both of her brothers. She has gone an entire day unwilling to put pants on, because she didn’t like the ones that her mother picked out for her. (And before you think us to be bad parents, please know that to coexist with this complicated little girl we’ve had to choose our battles carefully… and not wearing long pants in the house when you have nowhere to go rates as not very important.)
