Dear Joshua,
You are TEN!!!!! You have been ten since yesterday, actually, and I waited to write this because I wanted to just enjoy hanging out with you… and maybe also because I am way too old to be staying up until midnight writing blog posts.
At any rate, you are ten. A decade. 3,650 days + however many days extra for leap years worth of life. That’s crazy. It feels both too old and too young for you. Too old because you are still my little buddy who obsesses over dinosaurs and the Titanic and Tesla and Legos. Too young because when you are not talking to me about how a fight between a t-rex and a stegosaurus would go, you’re referring to yourself as a “mature adult” (as if) and explaining to me how an electric car works.
When I write these posts, I always want to make them special. Sometimes I recap the year. This is the year, for instance, that you somehow got a special mention in the science fair in spite of having only worked on your project for three days before it was due. You started Taekwondo and have excelled at it, displaying a persistence and fortitude that I could only dream of having. For the first time ever, you gave me a list of ways I was allowed to address you at school, and banned me from your presence in the cafeteria. But that’s okay. I still love you. And I will be showing all future girlfriends many photos of you in diapers.
This year, though it was a great one, did not feel like a year for recapping alone. This year was different. I don’t know if it’s because ten is a milestone of sorts, or because you have grown up so dang much lately, or because I really am getting old, but the word that kept coming to mind when I thought of you was strength.
You displayed tremendous strength from birth. Your body was shutting down and you had not received proper nutrition or oxygen for weeks, and still you took your first breath on your own. You fought like crazy to live. Your lung collapsed and you fought. Your other lung collapsed and you fought again. The damage to your body was so extensive that the doctors utilized every single medical option available to them and told us to prepare to say goodbye to you for good. And you fought back. You fought for every single breath and blink and ounce. You fought to not just live — you fought to thrive.
When you were released from the NICU, your fight wasn’t over. Your lungs were still scarred and needed extra oxygen. You had been through so much and would often just stare at nothing, not babbling, not even showing you knew we were there sometimes… and then you fought back again. You began to gurgle and smile and loved silly songs and to be tickled under the chin. They told us you might not ever be typical, but whatever you were, you were amazing.
You became a toddler, and new struggles entered the arena. You fought to sit up and stay sitting up on your own. You fought to crawl, determined that you would not be denied the item you wanted most… a plastic cover to a baby food container. Whatever. You crawled and crawled and then you stood and then you fought to walk. We fought alongside you, giving you what support and resources we could, but you had to do the heavy lifting. And you did. You did it through tears and frustration but none of that ever mattered because you did it. You, the baby who doctors thought might not make it out of the NICU, learned to walk.
As you grew into a preschooler, you thrived again as we learned that you had a lot of difficulty gaining weight and probably would forever. You went through a feeding program that would have made grown people cry — heck, I did cry — and you finished and you added yet another accomplishment to your ever-growing list. We discovered that you had a genetic condition that caused your blood sugar to plummet, and watched in fear as every illness brought the possibility of a trip to the emergency room. And when you did have to go to the hospital and stay, we sat and wondered and cried and feared that maybe, after all this, you would finally succumb to one of life’s obstacles.
But, of course, you fought back. You showed us what real strength was as you made it through round after round of IVs, blood work, finger pricks, and a whole host of other procedures. You learned to be still as a statue as you endured special bone scans and x-rays. You broke your arm and seemed indifferent. You broke your leg and happened to mention it to me three days later. You broke your other leg and got excited because this time you could choose a different cast color.
We found a doctor to help you with some of your struggles and they had a solution — medicine that is injected every night. Every night, we give you a shot. Every morning, you are the first one up, cheerfully talking to me about velociraptors as if you hadn’t just endured a process that I don’t know I could do.
As a big kid — I beg your pardon, mature adult — your struggles changed in many ways. You realized you were not the same as some of your classmates. And then you decided you were okay with that. You fought extra-hard to learn some concepts in school that others learned in a day, and no one would have blamed you for giving up, but you didn’t. You just kept going.
They told us you might not live, but you didn’t care. You fought. You fought so hard that people on six continents were praying for you. You fought in a way that showed us all how life was meant to be lived — not just to get through the day, but to do it with a strength and determination that anyone would be proud of. You have endured more in your life than some people will in a hundred years and you have never faltered. Oh, you get frustrated sometimes. You want to quit. We all do. But you always return, ready to try again, determined that this time will be the time you succeed.
And now you’re ten.
You made it to ten.
You weren’t supposed to live more than a week, and now you are celebrating a decade.
I don’t know what the next year or decade will bring. You will struggle more. You will encounter new problems and experience difficulty over and over. That’s life, and life has dealt you an especially turbulent hand. But I don’t really worry about you. I used to, when you were a baby. But I don’t anymore.
I don’t have to, because I know you. You always fight back.
So on this special birthday, I want you to know that you are celebrated. Not for your accomplishments — we are always proud of you for those. But our celebration comes from celebrating you. The person you are, and the incredible strength you have displayed.
Happy, happy tenth birthday to my Joshy-Jo, my Josher Washer T-Rex, my Captain Snugglepants, my Joshua. I love you. And I know you have banned me from calling you any of those names in public. But it’s my blog, so… deal with it. Fight me if you want.
You will probably win.
Love you always,
Mom.
thepluckyprocrastinator 
I love reading these each year! He’s so amazing and so are you!