eleven

There’s very little debate at my house over who is the favorite child. You could easily make an argument that any one of them has the preferred spot in my heart– because they all do.

But there are certainly some positions in the family that are easier to inhabit than others. Ben never has to wear hand-me-downs (though he also has to suffer all our first-time parent mistakes) and we all agree that Gabe and Mary have a blissful existence. But 4th boy? It’s a hard spot. It really is. And when your birthday comes after a whole slew of others? Yeah, it’s tough.

Xander came home from school after having a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (you’ve read the book, right? You know all about it.)– a math paper where he had all the right answers but was marked wrong on every problem because he ‘didn’t show his work’ (ooh, I hated that as a kid), a scuffle on the playground, a broken zipper on his backpack and a mother who forgot to bring birthday treats (I was on my way to the store, I was! and then the phone rang and I got distracted…).

But we salvaged the day with a giant orange balloon. Xander loves balloons; he begs for them at the store and spends the next few days attaching Playmobil guys or Lego men to the string and floating them around the house. This was the granddaddy of all balloons. We filled it with helium at the market and bought Xander his own bag of beef jerky.

No one can frown with belly full of beef jerky and a balloon in their hand.

And I feel exactly the same way about him.