Reflections of life.

Tomorrow is a big day in our house. Jack turns 7! So at a time when I am personally reflecting on my children and how happy they make me I thought I would share some of the stories and images we've collected as a family along the way. You may have read some of the story of Jack's illness and treatment but these are the funny, happy stories that Jack and his little brother Rohan have brought into our lives.

Jack has always been a fussy eater. The one exception to this came when he was about 10 months old. I got this panicked phone call from my wife after work. It was lucky that I was at the bottom of our street as I answered the phone and so ran up our driveway in record time to be faced with my distraught wife looking down at my son on the floor. She wasn't kneeling down, she hadn't picked him up, it seemed strange. And the cat was there. It turned out the cat had caught a mouse and brought it into the house and dropped it front of Jack. He did what any good 10 month old should and picked it up to have a chew on the dead mouse. Gross. The cat, Slightly, was sitting there looking up at me as if to say "Hey, this kids all right." I cleaned him up, called the doctor to make sure there were no nasty diseases floating around transmitted by mice and generally calmed my wife down for the next few hours. He still doesn't believe me that he did it....

Quite a few people said they thought Alison and I may not want any more kids after the trial by fire of Jacks first year of life. It was quite the opposite really. We started to talk about another child and how we thought that around the middle of the following year would be good timing to introduce number 2 into the world. Rohan decided that was way too long to wait and proceeded to write his own schedule for when his birthday should be.  Not much has changed in terms of Rohan and his impatience. At just 2 he decided that his mum was taking far to long to take him downstairs to play and so he managed to open the gate on the back deck (which was locked) and ride his little foot bike down the back stairs. He barely cried. He just got up, dusted himself off and let his mum take him to the doctor for his first stitches. I was so proud.

Nowadays Jack and Rohan are either best mates or worst enemies. They can play for hours on some awesome adventure that could involve dragons and pirates or high tech robots with flying skate boards and laser eyes. The next moment I am pulling them apart and sending them to opposite ends of the house to prevent world war three. The dichotomy will pull your head off. As a family though we all love spending time together with family favourites being camping and hanging out in the outdoors. I love it when we see them discovering bugs and lizards in the trees or pretending to make their own camp site near ours. A couple of highlights have been the bike races we have traveled to and they have the added bonus of new kids to play with and being my support crew. There is nothing like the excitement your children show when exploring a new place. Pure joy.

So now I am 7 years into this journey of parenthood. Would I change a thing even with all the ups and downs and stress? No way. I am so proud of my kids and the little humans they are becoming. This is the best adventure I have ever been on and I am just loving it. I also have the best companions I could hope for to share it with. My wonderful family.