Happy Birthday Jerral

"Its 5am in the morning. The air is cool, the environment tranquil. You are deep in the throes of slumberland when suddenly you feel an incessant slapping on your eyes. Startled and annoyed, you wake up, only to see a little baby boy's smiling face beaming down at you. Annoyance gone, drowsiness faded, you smile back. You hold out your arms, and the little one clambers into your lap. Squirming around, he snuggles himself into a comfortable position and promptly falls asleep, sucking his thumb. You gaze down at him, scarcely even daring to breathe or move for fear of any movement disturbing him. And yet, as you watch his peacefully sleeping face, a sense of contentment rise up to fill you and at that instance you couldn't feel anything but happiness .... and of course that sore back you can feel coming on after holding the little one in an unchanged position for an hour......."

It is now exactly one year since little Jerral was born and the little story above rather aptly encapsulates the changes that his arrival has wrought in the lives of everyone around him. How frustration, annoyance, and fear seems so inevitably mixed with love, joy, and happiness.

During the earlier days of Mommy's pregnancy, as Daddy and Mommy contemplated the impending arrival of Jerral, there were many moments of 'What if'. What if we hadn't had Jerral, how would our lives have changed and how would we have gone on etc.... Today, as we celebrate Jerral's birthday, we can no longer envisage a life without him. For all of his crying for milk, screaming for attention, changing of soiled nappies, we would happily live through it all again just for the single instance of his each and every smile, his laughter, his baby cooing. For with him by our sides, the colors of the world seems brighter, the sounds are sharper, images clearer, our lives seem fuller. And by his very existence, he has enriched both of our lives.

So today as we celebrate Jerral's ascent from infanthood to toddlerhood , Mommy and Daddy would just like to say : Happy Birthday Jerral, Thank You, We love you.