But it Seems Like Just Yesterday

Our first son, and third child, T.J,  was born in Mexico at a small clinic in Guadalajara.

 Funny story: fathers were not generally allowed in delivery rooms. Tom had not been able to see our twins born since theirs was an emergency birth (8 weeks premature) and they were delivered in a large, government hospital.

With T.J, we arranged with the doctor ahead of time that Tom could attend the delivery. 

However, once the day came, the doctor wanted to examine me first and make sure everything was set up before allowing Tom into the delivery room.

What the doctor didn't know is that I took after my mother and was not going to waste any time in getting that baby out. 

Out in the hallway, Tom was anxious and annoyed that the doctor had taken me away from him. He made up his mind to just barge into the delivery room anyway. A Catholic nun/nurse tried to block his way down the hallway, but he pushed her out of the way and burst through the delivery room door just as T.J took his first breath. 

I'm pretty shocked the doctor didn't turn to stone at the look Tom gave him, but how was he to know the baby would be born after only five minutes. The nurses were annoyed that they hadn't even had a chance to do all the pre-delivery work--IVs and monitors,etc. 

Three weeks after T.J was born we packed up our little family of five and moved to the U.S taking a break from fulltime mission's work for a time.

 Less than sixteen months later, our second son and fourth child was born. After that we constantly had to answer the question: "Do you have two sets of twins?" 

T.J was always very pretty (sorry, T.J--you were!), and people would constantly compliment us on our three girls. When our second son was born they would ask if we were glad we'd finally had a boy. This was despite T.J being dressed in boy clothes and sporting a boy haircut.

At three years old he pulled a table onto himself and knocked out his two front teeth giving him that adorable gap-tooth smile for the next few years.

T.J turns 22 today. He's a Junior at the University of Houston studying History. I love to hear him talk about history. He's going to make a great professor one of these days. While going to school he works as an assistant manager at a charity resale shop. He has a really good eye for the value of items. 

Happy Birthday, T.J! I'm so proud of you!

Related Post: read how T.J got his name here.

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