Today is my 72nd birthday. That sounds crazy to me, just as 71 did a year ago. But I’m starting to get more comfortable with those big numbers when they come around every year. I’ve learned to be grateful for the privilege of growing old. My mom died at 54 and Karen lost her mom at 67. My two younger sisters are both gone and we’ve lost several friends in recent years. I am grateful for each day.
My birthday cake this morning was a surprise treat from Karen. No April foolin’!
Just a couple of funny guys cracking each other up.
I’m starting this blog, which is similar to one from a couple of years ago when Karen and I turned 70, called ‘70 Fun Things @ 70’ . I only made it up to 21 ‘fun things’ — not for lack of fun things to write about, but . . . well, you know how journaling goes.
As I’m writing this, we are at our cabin in northern Minnesota. We live in Minneapolis within a couple of miles of our three grandkids, but because we’re traveling quite a bit this year, we spend a lot of time missing them.
Henry and I share a birthday, in a way. We both were born on the first day of the month. I am 72 today. Henry is 16 . . . months. While we think about all three of our grandkids every single day and love them dearly, it’s little Henry that has captured the hearts of not just the two of us, but everyone in the family. Karen and I constantly say things to each other like, “When can we see Henry again?” or “Look at this picture of Henry” or just “Henry . . .”.
3 wonderful kids.
I think the older you get, the more you realize how precious your time is with very young grandchildren. When a new grandchild arrives in your 70s, you start doing the math and reality hits.
We get to see Henry more regularly than was the case with the older two grands. Almost every week we’re home we find a way to stop over for some HenryTime.
As I write this, I realize it’s kind of pointless to try to describe how much being around these three kids as they grow up means to us. If you know it, you know it. I will write more about Svea and Otto, the two older ones, in future posts, but soon they will be 13 and 11, and their lives have become full of school and activities and friends, which means longer amounts of time between visits. Henry will be the same way before we know it, so we’re grabbing on to this little guy and holding him close every chance we get.
A photo from our visit from a week ago. Henry teaches us animal sounds.
Henry & Mom
Henry & Dad
Not a donut like Grandpa, but still a big boy breakfast of champions!
I celebrated my birthday with a delicious donut this morning. A little later I got a text from my daughter Lauren and a photo sent to her by Henry’s daycare. The note said, “Since he is 16 months today he gets to start eating the toddler breakfast, so they documented him having a waffle this morning.” Here’s a picture of that rite of passage. See? . . . he’s growing up right before our eyes.
I’ll end with a fun thing I stumbled on a few months ago. I can set the ‘wallpaper’ photo on my phone to a bunch of rotating pictures of a particular person. The facial recognition function finds pics of that person and adds them to the queue. Several times a day a random picture of that person pops up. I had it set to photos of Karen for a time, but she got tired of seeing herself every time one of us picked up my phone. So I switched it to Henry. Below are some examples.
What a delight it is for us to be Henry’s Gram and Gramps!
