He's legal now

Curly turned 18 today.  God help us all..

I don't have hardly any baby pictures of Curly.  Some, but none from the hospital.  This was because of 2 things - the first one is that DH double exposed the film that he shot when Curly was born.  And the second is because of the house fire we had in 1998, where we lost almost everything.  (That's another story.)

Curly at about age 3.  He liked weapons - that's a plastic sword.

Curly gave me the least amount of pregnancy issues.  I had pre-term labor and bed rest with the other two Stooges, none with Curly.  But when I was 8 months pregnant with Curly, I developed pneumonia and had to be hospitalized.

(There's a story with the pneumonia.   I'm not a big whiner with doctors, and this has caused me some issues when I do have a problem - they ignore me.  I got sick and went downhill pretty fast.  I had been sleeping sitting up, coughing, choking and gagging, for several nights.  The on-call OB had called in worthless amoxicillin for me, which I took dutifully and to no effect. Finally I called the OB and said "I'm going to the ER now." "But you have an appointment tomorrow. Can't it wait?" "NO!" So I went to the ER of the hospital I was to deliver at, and was promptly admitted, as my oxygen levels were in the 80's and I was having contractions. But no OB came, despite me sitting in a bed of the hospital's perinatal unit.  The on-call OB forgot about me.  So the next day I called the OB's office the next day and informed them that I wouldn't be at my appointment because I was next door IN THE HOSPITAL with pneumonia, and perhaps the OB might be interested. Said on-call guy was in my room within 15 minutes and fell all over himself apologizing. As well he should. He wasn't my primary OB, and I successfully avoided him from there on out, including the next pregnancy.)

I think he's about 6 here

Anyhow, I had Curly as a full-term baby.  He was 9 lbs, 7 oz and  21 inches, a scheduled c-section delivery.  As they were stitching me up, my OB (this was the good OB) came up and said, "I don't want to alarm you, but your baby has had trouble breathing and they've taken him to the NICU."  I was strapped down and couldn't do anything except whisper, "Okay."  DH had abandoned ship on me to call the relatives, you know, to do the hard part of having a baby.  Turned out Curly had something called persistent fetal circulation and had turned blue.  Anyhow, Curly ended up ok, but he looked like a giant in the NICU compared to the little tiny 1.5 lb premies.  He was hanging over the edge of the isolette, no lie.  He came home after about a week - we had him on a monitor for a month and had to learn infant CPR before he could come home from the hospital.

Curly right before 3rd grade

He's almost 6 feet tall now.  Obviously, he recovered.  In the mean time, I've probably taken him to the ER about 20 times and God only know how many visits to the pediatrician.  He's had at least 6 casts, all on arms or hands.

I may bitch about him, but Curly is known in my extended family as being really, really hilarious.  So much so that he was Funniest 8th grade boy, and got a high school senior superlative for the same thing.  He's very bright and creative.

He did this on purpose.  I'm saving this as ammo - will show it in the wedding slide show. There are others like this.

And he is now Legally An Adult.  And now Curly thinks he knows everything, and tells me so. "I know what I'm doing!"  Yeah, right.  He thinks he is all grown up, and can do everything himself.  Unfortunately, he won't really be a grownup until he realizes he can't do it all by himself, and that he doesn't know everything.

(Who am I fooling?  DH fits this bill - I thinks he knows EVERYTHING.)

Until then, I have to leave him in God's hands and pray that he will be all right.  I've done what I can.

I love you, Curly.  You're still my little boy.