7.

Just four or five months ago, my oldest child was seven years old.  Now he's eight, but I suddenly have a seven-year-old again.  Seth just celebrated his birthday!

It's a beautiful thing to have known Seth at three different ages now.  We brought him home at five and had the whole time that he was six to get to know him, and now it seems that he must have been here forever.  He's growing up and he's awesome.  I love this kid!

Seth has come such a long way in the past almost-fourteen months.  It's really rather miraculous.  The traumatized, scared, raging, possessive, private, controlling little boy of a year ago has morphed into a child who is happy far more often than he is sad or scared, who is (granted) intense but so much less controlling, who is always ready to move forward and engage every single day of his life, and who is relaxing almost visibly day by day.  It's incredible to hear him from a room or two away singing while he plays.  He still has issues and challenges ahead of him, no doubt, but he is becoming the boy we suspected and hoped he was going to be.

In so many ways, Seth is wise beyond his years.  How could he not be.  He is a bright and curious little boy who asks about a zillion questions every day as he navigates his way through his still-new life.  He has had so much catching up to do - he still does.  Though he has a hard time saying the words, his love for his family is evidenced by his observations and gentle concerns, and in his clear means of trying to take care of the other four members of his household.

I love raising boys.  Or maybe it's just that I love raising my boys.  They are so very different than me, totally wild by nature, and they provide me with an opportunity to stretch my parenting skills to the max.  My love for Seth is deep and my admiration for him wide.  I think this is a boy who will do anything he sets his mind to and who will be an example of how to grab on to life's experiences with everything in him.

Below is the very first picture we ever saw of our Seth.  The first time I saw the beautiful little five-year-old face that I'd dreamed of since I was a teenager.  Like Lizzie's picture earlier, Seth's appearance here is deceptive; though he looks relatively healthy (though sad), he was the size of a two-year-old child and he weighed only twenty-two pounds (the weight of Matthew when he was about six months old).  I can hardly write down his weight without crying.

Seth has lived through more in his short life than most of us will ever endure in a lifetime.  I am so proud of him, for how he has adapted and grown and become an integral part of this family.  He is the very definition of resilience - in that he has grieved the futility of so many of his life's circumstances and has accepted and adapted to his new life.  He is my son in every sense of the word and I will forever be grateful for the gift of my seven-year-old miracle.

Happy Birthday Seth!

(below)

Because of my Dad's accident, we decided this year to have Seth's family birthday celebration at my parents' house, so that my parents could participate.  Seth's choice of food was from a terrific little Vietnamese/Thai restaurant, but they happened to be closed on the day of his actual birthday, so we made a little detour and bought Chinese...followed by birthday cake, of course.

Seth loves anything lemon, and his cake request was for a lemon cake with cherries.  So I made a lemon bundt cake with a lovely fresh lemon glaze overtop, and filled the inside with cherries.  It was delicious, if I do say so myself!  He was so pleased with the result...just look at his face!! 

(below)

How old are you Seth???