Happy Birthday little buddy.

It’s hard to believe that my nephew, Dylan is now 4 years old. He is one of the reasons why it was hard to leave DC for good, we spent lots of time with him when we were there, and he always managed make us smile. We both miss him a lot.

We have so many fun memories of him in those first few years. We would have him for a few days every so often. I’d pick him up at his Dad’s (Matt’s brother) office and then we’d head to the mall. He was the best shopping buddy. We’d hit the playground, and then go to the Mac store and the Disney store to do some shopping. And then we’d head to some kids event or park and play until I was worn out.

One time we were at this kids concert in a coffee shop, and he walked to the front and stood there to watch the strange guy sing. The next thing I knew he had decided to hold the hand of a father (not his father). The guy was covered in tattoos and piercings and had crazy multi-colored hair and had a little girl about Dylan’s age with him. I politely told Dylan we had to get going and he looked up and said “He’s funny”.

And of course there was the time when Matt and I took Dylan out to breakfast and Dylan decided to make the weirdest noise EVER. It was a very loud grunting noise. Matt looked at him and said “What’s that noise??” and Dylan started cracking up. When we got in the car Dylan started to say (over and over) “WHAT’S THAT NOISE????!!!!” and then proceed to make the noise. He did this for a while, until he finally stopped and started to sing, Jimmy Buffets “Margaritaville”. At this point Matt had to pull over because he was laughing so hard.

And if you haven’t seen it, this is Dylan doing a cover of Margaritaville.

When Kiley was born, we had Dylan for a couple of days. Poor guy had an awful cold, I had to call my friend who is a doctor to figure out what the heck to do with him – it was so sad seeing him sick. He was crying and coughing one of the nights and Matt was in his guest room trying to rock him to sleep and kept saying “Why you crying little buddy?” and Dylan, in all of his sobbing looked at Matt and put his hand on his face and said “WHY YOU CRYING? Little buddy?”

When we went back to visit in March, we got to spend a couple of days with Dylan. We went to the Washington Monument where he and Matt ran the good part of a mile up to the top of the hill so we could fly kites. When he was running out of breath he started to slow down and started singing very loudly a song that sounded just like “I’ve been working on the railroad” but had the words “We’re running up the hill” and “We’re going to fly kites”. He is going to be a musical genius one day And on the way home when we told him he had to take a nap, he sang very loudly for a few minutes “I’m not going to take a nap, NO, I’m not gonna do it, don’t do it! I’m not gonna take a nap!”

As an Aunt & Uncle we could just laugh about it – he fell asleep on the way home anyway.

Dylan was my little bit of brightness in a really dark time in our lives. My diabetes was getting worse, and things were not looking good for me. He somehow managed to help me forget all of that when we’d hang out with him, he made me realize that despite all that we were going through there was joy to be found and laughter to be had.

It’s one of the reasons why I love children so much – they just know when it’s ok to laugh and be happy. He taught us a very important lesson – sometimes it’s ok to just be silly, to dance for no reason, to make funny noises (even when people stare at you), to sing songs wherever you are and to see all the small details that we to often forget as adults.

So, happy birthday to our little buddy.

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