Jude is 10 years old today. As I did on the occasion of Mason’s tenth birthday, here’s a few randomly assorted memories I have about the day Jude was born.

1. Modern medicine at its most evolved. A planned, scheduled birth. Keturah was scheduled to give birth around 9 am and we were supposed to check into the hospital around 6:00. This isn’t the kind of appointment you want to be late for so of course we get up super early and give ourselves enough time to head north through San Francisco and over the Golden Gate Bridge. Turns out we had extra time. So we had time to stop for a bagel and a coffee en route to a birthing.
2. That 5 minute wait I had in the hallway before the nurses escorted me into the delivery room. The second time around, it didn’t feel like eternity…but it was still kind of terrifying.
3. So this one isn’t about the day Jude was born. But about the moment 9 months prior when Keturah took a positive pregnancy test. It was an early Sunday morning. Mason was 15 months old and had just awoken. I went downstairs to his room (still half asleep myself), had him on the floor and was in NASCAR pit crew mode changing his diaper. I didn’t even know that Ketruah was upstairs taking a pregnancy test. So I’m heads down changing tires, I mean diapers, and Keturah walks in and says “I’m pregnant”. I gave her a quick look of disbelief and like a good pit crew went back to work, getting Mason all geared up with a new diaper. And then I went and found a big cup of coffee over which to process it all.
4. Even the second time around, the routine didn’t change that first day. Jude was born, Keturah slept a bunch that day, and I spent the bulk of my time just staring at him. The whole “miracle of child birth” thing isn’t cliche at all. It’s completely true.