It's Sydney's Birthday!

The little man is five now. I can hardly believe that five years have passed so quickly! Sydney is the youngest son of my youngest son, Steve. He came into this world at 37 weeks and five pounds, thirteen ounces, so he wasn't too big a baby. We had a crowded delivery room. We had Steve, Kat's sister Marge, her brother Steven, Grandpa, and Grandma. Hardly room for the doc and the nurses.

Sydney was a colicky baby and barely slept the first year of his life. After he started walking he settled down and started sleeping better. He was afraid of most people, except Mom, Dad, and Grandma. He didn't think much of Grandpa in those days. It wasn't until I showed him that Grandpa's big white beard could be a plaything that he decided Grandpa was pretty cool. Now he and Grandpa are best buddies.

Jim and Millie have older children to babysit the littler kids, but Steve and Kat don't have anyone close but us, so we end up taking care of Sydney a bit more often than the others.

Sydney is now articulate, intelligent, and funny. He got over his shyness and has the cutest conversations with perfect strangers. He's decided that he's going to marry Kanisha, a girl in his preschool. He had a couple of other girlfriends until his dad told him that good guys don't cheat on their special girl. He'll be starting kindergarten this fall, I think he'll do pretty well.

He definitely didn't want anything to do with Grandpa/Santa at six months old.

Here you can see the relationship improved immensely. He always had to have his arm around Grandpa.

"Grandpa, tell Grandma to take my picture like this!"

Happy birthday, Syd!