Brandon is ten years old today...

Today, my sweet boy is ten years old. I say this with a wonderful mixture of joy, relief, wistfulness and pride. On this day, when I look at him, I am struck by pure amazement and happiness that he is here with us and that we get to celebrate this day. Each year on his birthday, I wake up feeling enormously grateful to God for granting us THIS year and THIS birthday with our son. We excitedly celebrate each one of our children's birthdays, but there is that something extra special about Brandon's. After he was diagnosed, we celebrated that first birthday (his sixth) like there was no tomorrow- because at that time, we didn't know if there would be for him. We were very aware that that birthday could have been his last and we wanted to make it the best darn birthday in the world. And we did. Even the local news did a story on his for his birthday that year. And we've done the same for each birthday since. Now, of course, we're pretty sure that we're done with Aplastic Anemia and that we're going to get to keep our baby (at least to the extent that any one of us can ever really count on tomorrow). But we know that with his disease and the treatment option he had that he does have about a 33% chance of relapse and a 10% chance of developing a cancer of some sort or MDS in the future. So we relish his birthdays, and cherish them and breathe them in.

It's an amazingly grateful feeling I have in my heart that we are celebrating his birthday and watching him grow and learn and play and develop into a young man. It's almost a surreal experience and one that I am so grateful for. His birthday is more than a celebration of turning another year older, its a celebration that we have been blessed with the ability to hold him in our arms for yet another year and create memories with him for another year and that we are able to see today, things that we were so uncertain of a few years ago. So THIS is what he looks like at ten, so THIS is what he's doing at ten, so THIS is who he is at ten. I don't have to wonder, these questions all have wonderfully beautiful answers. This morning while he was wolfing down his french toast before school I kept reaching out to touch the top of his head thinking "Thank you God for giving us this year and for letting me be his Mom."