On Cason's birthday, I posted of picture of him on facebook that was taken in the hospital when he was probably two days old. My friend, Cheri (who is my mom's friend but now she's my friend too...how's that for the circle of life?) commented, "May you always cherish the initial misconceptions you had about him." The comment made me laugh out loud (or "lol" as the kids say) because of how true it is.

I have been reading so many blog entries and facebook updates of people that are just having their first baby and what they think that experience is going to be like.

Y'all, was I that dumb?

Probably.

The ones that make me laugh the most are the people who act like they have it all figured out and the baby is, like, hours old. I always want to say something like, "Call me when you have two or three kids and are on your fifth week of no sleep and you go into public with your pants on backwards accidentally but then you realize it and you just don't care because you're too tired to care about anything."

When Cason was a newborn, I thought, "This kid is going to be like Colin -- easy going and laid back."

If you know my son personally, I'll wait while you pick yourself up off the floor after a fit of laughter. He isn't laid back. He isn't easy going. He was a NEWBORN for heaven's sake! A "three week early too tired and lazy to bother with eating" newborn.

And here's the thing about parenting: Once you get one stage down and somewhat figured out, your kid is in a new stage. I'm sure that people with grown up kids enjoy laughing at me with my five and three and half year olds. And that's fine. They've earned the right to laugh at me. Just like I've earned the right to laugh at people with a three day old baby who talk about the baby's "personality" coming though or those that talk about how in love they are with their newborn. Because really? That love is honestly nothing compared to how much they're going to love those kids down the road. It multiplies till you just about can't stand it.