Before we had children, my husband Gregg and I had two different fertility specialists tell us that we would probably never have children. Then, when we had been married for six and a half years, we had our precious son Andrew (now 32).

[caption id="attachment_1127" align="aligncenter" width="479" caption="Andrew at 6 months old"]<a href="http://motherhoodstress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Andrew6mofingers.jpg"><img class=" wp-image-1127 " title="Andrew6mofingers" src="http://motherhoodstress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Andrew6mofingers.jpg" alt="" width="479" height="685" /></a>[/caption]

Eighteen months later, to the day, we had adorable Matthew (now 31).

[caption id="attachment_1076" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="Matthew at 4 months old"]<a href="http://motherhoodstress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Mattbaby.jpg"><img class=" wp-image-1076 " title="Mattbaby" src="http://motherhoodstress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Mattbaby.jpg" alt="" width="480" height="596" /></a>[/caption]

Two and a half years later we had our beautiful daughter Lisette (now 28).

[caption id="attachment_1119" align="aligncenter" width="386" caption="Lisette at 6 months old"]<a href="http://motherhoodstress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Lisette6mo.jpg"><img class=" wp-image-1119 " title="Lisette6mo" src="http://motherhoodstress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Lisette6mo.jpg" alt="" width="386" height="522" /></a>[/caption]

Two boys and a girl. Most people thought we had our perfect family. BUT, we had decided that, since God had given us children as a "miracle" - an unexpected gift, that we would continue to love whatever children God wanted to give us.

So, nineteen months after Lisette, in April 1985, we welcomed our amazing son Benjamin into our family.

[caption id="attachment_1126" align="aligncenter" width="522" caption="Benjamin as a newborn"]<a href="http://motherhoodstress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/benjnewborn.jpg"><img class=" wp-image-1126 " title="benjnewborn" src="http://motherhoodstress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/benjnewborn-743x1024.jpg" alt="" width="522" height="719" /></a>[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1123" align="aligncenter" width="479" caption="My Daddy rocking Benjamin to sleep"]<a href="http://motherhoodstress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/DaddyBenjNewborn.jpg"><img class=" wp-image-1123" title="DaddyBenjNewborn" src="http://motherhoodstress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/DaddyBenjNewborn.jpg" alt="" width="479" height="417" /></a>[/caption]
<p style="text-align: left;">I have MANY cute Benjamin stories to tell. That makes it difficult for me to pick only one or two to tell in a post, for his birthday.  Do I tell about the day he wanted to cut his OWN apple? I'd handed him a slice of apple with his breakfast and put the knife away - W-A-Y back on the kitchen counter. Then I'd walked to the front door, picked up the newspaper off the front stoop, and started scanning the headlines for the day.</p>


[caption id="attachment_1122" align="aligncenter" width="479" caption="Benjamin loved for his Grandpa to tickle him."]<a href="http://motherhoodstress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/BenjRalphtickle.jpg"><img class=" wp-image-1122 " title="BenjRalphtickle" src="http://motherhoodstress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/BenjRalphtickle.jpg" alt="" width="479" height="589" /></a>[/caption]

Then Benjamin screamed. I looked up to see that he had set down the apple slice I'd given him, pushed his chair over to the kitchen counter, climbed onto and across the counter, grabbed the knife and tried to cut his own slice of apple.  Cut himself to the bone. Needed stitches.

[caption id="attachment_1125" align="aligncenter" width="479" caption="This whole series of photos, taken when Benjamin was three years old, were given to us free, in exchange for letting the photogher use them as an advertisement. We were not the only people who thought he was a cutie!"]<a href="http://motherhoodstress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Benj3yrs.jpg"><img class=" wp-image-1125 " title="Benj3yrs" src="http://motherhoodstress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Benj3yrs.jpg" alt="" width="479" height="597" /></a>[/caption]

Or do I tell about the day of his kindergarten "round-up," when he was NOT in the mood to answer the questions, with which the school would place him in a kindergarten class. First one teacher, then another, asked him the required questions and he refused to talk. Finally our friend Augusta Davis, the third kindergarten teacher, tried. For her he condescended to answer two questions. What does your Daddy do for a living? He writes books.  What does your mother do? She washes dishes.

At the END of kindergarten, his teacher told us that he was the first student she'd had, in 30 years of teaching, who had a "perfect" record, not a single mistake on any worksheet or test, for the entire year.

[caption id="attachment_1124" align="aligncenter" width="521" caption="Jonathan and Benjamin on Jonathan&#39;s first day of kindergarten. What a great big brother!"]<a href="http://motherhoodstress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/BenjJonAltoPark2.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-1124" title="BenjJonAltoPark2" src="http://motherhoodstress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/BenjJonAltoPark2.jpg" alt="" width="521" height="885" /></a>[/caption]

Or do I tell the story of the month before he started kindergarten, when every night for three weeks, he climbed into our bed, between 2 and 3 a.m., cuddled up next to me, put his sweet little hands on my cheeks, looked imploringly into my sleep-dazed eyes and woke me up, saying "Mama, please don't make me go to kindergarten.  PLEASE, I don't want to go to kindergarten."

By the time school started I was prepared for the worst first-day-of-school ever. We had talked about the possibility of homeschooling him if the first month went as badly as we thought it might.

I was NOT prepared for him to run into the classroom on the first day, greeting everyone cheerfully, without even one backward glance at his mother. Who was standing in the doorway with her mouth gaping open, wishing he would at least give her a goodbye hug.

Or do I tell the story of his freshman year of high school, when doctors discovered a tumor in his ear. We spent a week waiting for the pathology report that told us - good news! - it was benign. The bad news was that, even benign, it needed surgery to be removed and had eaten away some of the bone around that ear.

Benjamin missed 18 days of school that year. But, even so, at the end of the year was still in the top five students at his high school, one of the students in the running for valedictorian.

That summer, he came and asked for a meeting with his Dad and me, to discuss the possibility of our homeschooling him for the remainder of high school.  Why? we asked.

"I already don't have enough time to play soccer or be in the band at Rome High, and also be competitive academically. I want to have time for art and music. Time to think and to play soccer. Life is too short to not have time for those things."

We homeschooled Benjamin - or rather he homeschooled himself - his last three years of high school. Friends gave him a prom - one many said was the best prom they had ever attended.  He put out a CD of his own music -written by him, sung by him and for which he played the piano - before finishing high school. We have a house full of his art work. He sold 50+ t-shirts emblazoned with the Lewis Academy emblem.

One last Benjamin story: one morning, he came to breakfast dressed in a button-up shirt and tie. "Are you going somewhere special today?" I asked.

"No," Benjamin replied. "The student body at Lewis Academy has decided on a dress code. Shirts and ties on Mondays, Tuesday, Thursday and Fridays. Suitcoats as well on Wednesdays."

And one very last story: the student body of Lewis Academy got up early each morning and fixed the family breakfast for all the years he was homeschooled.