My "baby" turns twelve today. The youngest of my four, Josh was a surprise gift from heaven.

Twelve years later, as he rapidly approaches the day he makes me the shortest person in the family, I'm devoting this blog post to Joshua Tyler Turner, born Dec. 11, 1997 at Aspen Valley Hospital in Aspen, Colo. He's the only one of my four who had the audacity to subject me to an all-night labor and delivery so he could enter the world bright and early in the morning, and bring the perfect note of completion to our family unit. Like the cherry on top of an ice cream sundae.

Josh has a flair for the dramatic and a crazy sense of humor. (Think of a freckled Jim Carrey in a pre-teen body.) 

He's always entertaining. Literally. He's always "on." If no one is in the room, he's entertaining the dog. If the dog is outside, he entertains himself by making strange noises and talking to the computer, or the TV, or the refrigerator, or the floor.

He's social in a family of introverts. He's noisy in a household of quiet people. He's in constant motion when the rest of us are pretty content to sit still and read a book. And while those traits probably make life difficult for him sometimes (and are a frequent cause of him being hollered at) I hope he understands that without him, we'd be horribly unbalanced as a family, like a rainbow photographed in black and white.

So, happy 12th birthday, Joshua! I love you SO very, very much; and I'm so proud of the child you have been and the kind, wise, generous and helpful young man you are becoming.

May this be the first day of your best year yet!

And now I need to go make your cake...