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“OF COURSE I’M HAVING KIDS!”

OUR FIRST SON, Reed Silas Robertson, decided to test my resolve to have children by delaying his arrival. My due date was May 5, 1995, and my obstetrician was scheduled to leave on vacation shortly after. She was one of ten doctors I worked for as an administrative assistant at a local obstetrics and gynecology (ob-gyn) clinic, so I knew her as both my doctor and one of my employers. If Reed wasn’t born on his due date or hadn’t come while she was away, I was scheduled to meet her at the hospital on May 15 for labor to be induced.

At 6 a.m. on May 15, Jase and I showed up at the hospital. It was the day after Mother’s Day, and I wasn’t certain that I could go through with the delivery. The fears that had once made me declare, “I am never having kids” surfaced again. I was afraid of the pain. As it turned out, I had good reason to be afraid. Reed’s birth was far from simple. On a scale of one to ten, my pain registered at seventy-five!

For the next several hours, nothing seemed to move very quickly. At 3:30 in the afternoon, the doctor broke my water, and by 5 p.m. I was dilated to three centimeters. For the next several minutes, I could hardly believe the pain, screaming silently inside, I can’t handle this! Not only was I hurting physically, I felt guilty and ashamed for not being stronger. Angry and disappointed with myself, I struggled to breathe and wanted to cry. Without the benefit of my breathing techniques to control the pain, I told Jase to ask the nurse to order an epidural.

The nurse came in, rolled her eyes at me, and said, “The doctor said I could check you. If you’re close to four centimeters, I’ll go ahead and order it.” I have never prayed so hard for the number four in all of my life!

I was in excruciating pain between 5:00 and 5:25 p.m. for good reason. Within a span of twenty-five minutes, I dilated from three centimeters to nine centimeters. I still wonder if that was some kind of record!

The nurse was as shocked as Jase and I were. In fact, she panicked, and that really upset me. I could see my stomach convulsing. When she gasped and said, “You’re nine! It’s too late for an epidural!” I cratered emotionally. My plans of a pain-free delivery were fading quickly.

Even though I was a wreck, I maintained my budget-mindedness. Loudly and emphatically, I said, “I paid for that epidural!” For the next two hours, with no medication whatsoever, I pushed. I kept pushing with no results because Reed had turned and was stuck in my pelvis—positioned so his face was facing my abdomen. Usually, the baby is facing the mother’s back.

Meanwhile, my dad was outside of the delivery room with a 1990s-size video camera rolling. He has more than two hours of footage of a wooden door! A large crowd had gathered beside him and my mom outside the door—friends and family representing both sides were there. Reed would be the first grandchild on my side of the family and the first grandson on the Robertson side of the family, so there was lots of anticipation about seeing this baby. The Robertsons alone make up a sizable group of people, and the hospital stretched the rules, allowing them and everyone else to congregate outside my door. They had to be very quiet, because they really were not supposed to congregate in the hallway. The only reason they were allowed to be there is that the doctor made an exception for me because of my working relationship with her.

After a lot of pushing with no progress, the nurse climbed onto the table and tried to push Reed out of my body. She put both of her hands on the top of my stomach and pushed downward, as though she was trying to push Reed down the birth canal. After I screamed, “No!” the doctor looked at the nurse and shook her head as if to say, “Don’t do that again.” When I screamed, “No!” I meant it, but I immediately felt bad and apologized to her, all during a contraction. My exclamation is actually one of the few sounds that can be heard on the video. Looking back, I don’t think a scream was inappropriate at all.

Finally, the doctor decided a forceps delivery was necessary and ordered anesthesia. Then, in a move that shocked, hurt, and offended me, she turned her chair around, with her back to me, and started watching television. When Jase saw this scenario being played out, he realized that I could not choose to suddenly take a break. He knew I needed support, and once the next contraction started, he and the nurse jumped in to help me—encouraging me, telling me to push, reminding me that I could do it. In my mind, I knew there was nothing I could do but wait on the anesthesiologist, but my body never got that message. While the doctor watched television, my body kept trying to get the baby out. I knew my doctor couldn’t do anything more until the anesthesiologist arrived, but I was appalled that she seemed to ignore me while I was suffering and struggling so intensely. After all, I was still having contractions every minute or so. Even a little false hope would have been appreciated at that point.

Gritting my teeth, I had a moment of déjà vu, remembering all the times I had watched television shows where women were in labor and dramatically crying out, “I can’t do this!” I used to make fun of those scenes, saying, “That’s so ridiculous. What are they going to do, live with a baby in their belly for the rest of their lives? What a silly thing to write into a script.” Turns out, it wasn’t so silly after all.

My body was still seizing in pain, and I felt complete despair. I wanted to give up. I looked at Jase and quietly said to him, “I can’t do this.” Jase, calm and collected as usual, stroked my head, looked at me with somewhat of a smirk, and said, “Yes, you can.” Somehow, I believed him.

Once the anesthesiologist arrived, the nurse said to me, “This is the last contraction you’ll ever feel.” I sat through six more contractions as he attempted to find the right place to insert the needle. I had to sit upright on the edge of the table, with a baby almost-but-not-quite out of me. With blood dripping down my back, my muscles seized, and Jase dug his hands into my back trying to help. But not much was going to help me in any significant way except getting that baby out. Using the forceps, the doctor eventually delivered our healthy firstborn boy, Reed.

A few minutes later, Jase looked at Reed’s cone-shaped head and said sincerely, “We’ll still love him.” I had to give him a break; this was his first child, and he had no idea that Reed’s head would eventually look normal. He thought Reed would be cone-headed for the rest of his life! I’m sure one of our moms enlightened him fairly quickly, and they all had a good laugh about it.

As soon as the nurse handed our newborn to me, I felt an overwhelming connection to him, a bond I cannot describe, but one that other mothers understand. I thought he was the most incredible thing I had ever seen. In a moment I will never forget, I took Reed in my arms for the first time, and he turned his head all the way around to face me and looked straight into my eyes. I could hardly believe this baby, only a few minutes old, who had never seen a face before, found mine. I still wonder how he knew to look into my eyes, and after all these years, that powerful communication between mother and newborn still amazes me.

Finally, the door of my room was opened, and Jase took Reed out to meet our family and friends. I could hear everyone excitedly talking, relieved that our baby had finally arrived. After Jase handed Reed back to the nurses, he came back into the delivery room and held my hand while the nurses stitched and cleaned me. I must have fallen asleep because I don’t remember much about that time. Jase later told me that he felt like he had been part of an R-rated horror movie because of the blood, pain, and graphic nature of this birthing experience, not to mention the occasional screams (mine, not his).

When the staff got ready to roll me back to my hospital room from the delivery room, I was completely exhausted beyond anything I had ever felt—mentally and physically. I remember very little about those moments except that I realized I was too tired to even open my eyes. All I remember hearing was the sound of Willie’s voice cracking jokes and a comment that Reed’s head was fourteen point five inches in diameter. No wonder he got stuck.

I was so totally spent that when the nurse asked me if I wanted her to bring Reed back so I could hold him, I said, “I cannot even open my eyes. I just can’t take him right now.” People have asked me if being unable to open my eyes had anything to do with the medication. It did not; I was that exhausted. The nurses let me rest all night and brought Reed to me the next morning.

A Robertson Through and Through

Like most expectant parents during the weeks and months before a baby’s birth, Jase and I had many conversations about what to name our child. Jase wanted to name him Cypress Creek Robertson, with the nickname “Cy.” He thought this was brilliant because his family lived on Cypress Creek, a small tributary off the Ouachita River. I immediately vetoed that idea.

At that point in time, I had not met Jase’s favorite uncle, Si Robertson. I’m sure some people would even contend that he is now America’s favorite TV uncle, but I knew very little about Si when Reed was born because he had been serving in the military for more than twenty-four years and had never lived in West Monroe. I simply knew that Jase was named after him—Jason Silas Robertson—and once I nixed “Cypress Creek,” Jase wanted to name our firstborn son after Uncle Si too. Since his uncle’s nickname “Si” is pronounced “Cy,” Jase said, “That’s the brilliant part of the plan!”

I said, “If we’re gonna name him after you and your uncle, let’s do it.”

We also liked the name Reed, which has special meaning to us because Jase is one of the best duck-call makers in the world. His ear is amazing, and he can duplicate the sound of many types of ducks to near perfection. One of the keys to his skill with duck calls is his remarkable ability to craft their reeds. Reed’s name not only honors his great-uncle Si, it also honors his father’s expertise.

Even though Jase and I had intentionally waited for almost five years to have a child, knowing it would change our lives, we had no idea how much change would occur. Having Reed didn’t just change our lives; it turned them upside down. We went from our simple existence of doing almost anything we wanted to do at any time to being responsible for another living, breathing human being. This little person could not do anything for himself, and that was something I had to get used to—much more than I ever anticipated.

Since the day he was born, Reed has been a strong type A personality. He is always ready to go and always eager to speak his mind. He is not intimidated by conflict and is the kind of person who will argue simply to prove a point. (Hmm, sounds like a few more Robertsons I know.) The more heated a conversation becomes, the more he enjoys it. He does not necessarily love to argue for the sake of disagreeing with someone as much as he refuses to refrain from arguing if a disagreement is necessary to win his case. He is also one to test every boundary presented to him, making sure his daddy and I mean what we say. This is where consistency was born in my parenting skills!

When Reed was two years and ten months old, I decided it was high time for him to be potty trained. I had read a few books on how to accomplish this task, and most of the advice suggested a long, drawn-out process over a few weeks. Because I worked outside the home, and we had had another young child by that time, I chose to try to hit this process head-on and finish it quickly. So after Reed’s nap one Thursday afternoon, I said to him, “You’re a big boy now. You’re not going to wear diapers anymore. You’re going to start tee-teeing in the potty.”

He immediately started screaming and crying, “I don’t want to!”

I knew right then and there that he was ready.

For the next few hours, I left his bottoms off and asked him the same question, literally, every five minutes: “Do you need to tee-tee?”

Every single time I asked, his answer was the same: “No.”

That evening, while I was in the kitchen cooking dinner, he walked toward me and stopped, saying nothing, but looking straight at me.

“Do you need to tee-tee?” I asked again.

He didn’t answer. He simply glared at me with a glare I knew all too well. I knew what he was thinking.

“Don’t do it,” I said calmly.

The glare continued.

“Don’t even think about it,” I said sternly.

Without taking his eyes off of me for even a split-second, he peed right there on my ceramic tile floor. By this point I knew the difference between his being defiant and having an accident. I immediately disciplined him strongly, and he understood that I would not give in to his silent, passive tantrum. He knew his days of wearing diapers were over. I reinforced that if he ever did anything like that again, he would receive the same punishment.

After that incident, he was very cooperative with the potty-training process, and by the time Sunday morning rolled around, he was wearing big boy underwear under his church clothes and doing great.

Reed is a born competitor, and whether he is on the football field or in the kitchen trying to convince me to give him permission to do something, he goes for the win, no matter what it takes. He is quite an artist, both on paper and in music, wowing us constantly with his talent. He refuses to take no for an answer, determined to make his dreams come true. He has grown into a God-fearing, fun-loving, determined young man, and we couldn’t be more proud of him.

Another Adventurous Birth

A couple of years after Reed was born, the trauma surrounding his birth could not keep Jase and me from wanting another baby. I mean, my body was stretched as wide as humanly possible when he was born, so the next one should slide out quickly, right? We were so excited to be expecting a new baby on Christmas Eve of 1997, hoping and praying for a smooth pregnancy and a normal delivery with a lot less drama and a lot less pain than what surrounded Reed’s birth. It did not exactly work out that way.

The first unusual situation we faced was that I started bleeding several weeks into my pregnancy. The doctor ordered an ultrasound and to our great relief said, “The baby’s fine. Everything is okay.” However, she went on to say, “you’re sloughing off something, though. It looks like there was another baby.” She finally concluded two embryos had been conceived and that they were growing in separate sacs. The doctor told me that it was a common occurrence under these circumstances for one of the babies not to be viable. In all of my prenatal visits prior to that day, she had only heard one heartbeat so even though I was surprised and a little sad by the news, I took it calmly. Jase and I were excited about the one baby we knew we were expecting and that the embryo was still safe, sound, and growing.

Several weeks before Cole’s due date, the doctor told us he was breech. She explained my two options: She could manually turn him inside of me so his head would emerge first during a natural birth or I could have a C-section. For several reasons, the idea of turning him was not appealing to me. First, even though I endured almost unbearable pain with Reed, I still wanted to avoid as much pain as possible—and turning my second baby sounded like an excruciating process. Second, I knew God had designed babies to position themselves for labor and delivery, and I felt there had to be a reason he was not headed in the right direction. I kept thinking, We just don’t need to mess with this by turning him. Even though I did not want to have a major surgery so close to Christmas, I never was at peace with the idea of repositioning him, so I chose to have a C-section.

I scheduled the C-section for December 11, knowing I would need a couple of weeks to recover before Christmas, especially with busy, excited two-year-old Reed in the house, and because this was during our duck-season split. Jase jokingly said the timing would be perfect, since he would not be in the duck blind. Jase and I completed the necessary paperwork immediately after Thanksgiving and started our last-minute preparations for Cole’s arrival. Despite Cole being breech our plans were falling into place.

On the morning of December 4, something did not feel quite right. Since I never went into labor with Reed, I had no idea what labor felt like. When I had the same sensation several times, I decided to watch the clock. It was happening every eight minutes. I got Reed up and dressed, and we headed to my parents’ house. I dropped him off with my mom before heading to work, as I did every morning, though by that point I was only working part time.

“I don’t know if this is important or not, but I’m feeling something every eight minutes,” I told her.

“You’re in labor!” she gasped excitedly.

The contractions were not very strong, but at my mother’s insistence, I called my doctor. Her staff told me to go to the hospital and be placed on a monitor. If anything was happening, they said, the hospital would let the doctor know. So I drove myself to the hospital and checked in alone because it was December—duck hunting season. Jase was quite a distance away, and in those days when cell phones were not as widely used as they are now, I had no way to reach him. Thankfully my mom was pretty sure I was in labor, so she found a trusted friend to watch Reed and then joined me at the hospital.

Soon after I arrived at the hospital, I called Miss Kay to tell her I might be in labor. She was surprised, of course, and said, “Jase is out in the duck blind with Phil. I don’t know how in the world we can get a message to him.”

More than anything, I wanted Jase there, but I kept relatively calm because I was hooked up to a monitor that was supposed to register each contraction with a line that moved up and down, like a graph. It did not display any labor activity. I felt I might really be in labor, but I supposed the monitor knew best. Not really. The leads on the monitor were not attached properly, which is why it registered nothing. When the nurse applied them correctly, it showed I was in strong labor.

“We need to get you into the delivery room right now,” the nurse told me.

No! I thought. My husband is in a duck blind, and we have no way to reach him! I immediately started crying, thinking, I cannot even imagine doing this without Jase. Crying did not help matters, as many pregnant women know that sinuses are not their friend during pregnancy, especially in the middle of winter. Even though I tried my hardest to hide my tears, my nose quickly stuffed up, and I had a hard time breathing.

In the midst of all the emotion, a nurse came into my room and said the hospital did not have any of my paperwork. With tears dotting the release forms, I re-signed all the papers. In the background, I heard the anesthesiologist say, “If we could get her to stop crying, . . .” but I couldn’t. All I could think of was how much I wanted Jase there at that moment. In fact, I didn’t think I could go through with the surgery without him, and I didn’t even want to try. But there was no way he could get to the hospital in time.

I called Miss Kay again and gave her an update. She could hear the emotion in my voice and said sympathetically, “I can’t get to him.”

I was devastated.

I had no choice but to garner my courage to go through the C-section without my husband. I tried to be strong, but the words “He’s not going to make it” kept assaulting my mind. As much as I wanted to keep my composure and as hard as I tried, I struggled terribly.

I do not remember anything about being prepared for surgery, but I do remember lying on the operating table. Because of my job at the clinic, I knew most of the nurses in the operating room. That gave me a bit of comfort, and I was thankful to have friends around, but all I really wanted was Jase. Silent tears flowed down my face and soaked my bed sheet.

As soon as the doctor made the first incision, a nurse named Rhonda said, “Guess who’s here?” My view was blocked by a sheet, and I didn’t realize she was talking to me, so I didn’t respond. Then I heard, “The dad.”

I panicked. Not my dad, I thought. I don’t want my dad in here. That would be so weird!

Someone finally said, “Jason,” calling my husband by the name most of our friends and family, including me, have always called him.

He walked over to me, peeked behind the sheet, and said, “Hey, Babe,” then kissed me on the cheek. The minute he entered the operating room, the whole atmosphere changed. It was as though his presence brought a peace and an ease that hadn’t been there before.

Jase, in his muddy hunting gear, smelled quite musty and appeared to have blood on his clothes. The doctor wanted him sterile as quickly as possible and was barking orders to him. As an orderly handed him some scrubs, he said to her very calmly, “I washed my hands,” as if to say, “Calm down, lady. Everything is okay.”

The nurses and I thought his interaction with my doctor was funny. The doctor did not.

The nurses and I also thought the tale of his getting to the hospital was hilarious. He told us that after my first phone call that morning to Miss Kay, she called our neighbor Mac and told him I could be in labor. She wasn’t sure yet but wanted to see if Mac could send someone to get Jase just in case it was true. Mac took the situation seriously enough that he immediately sent Chad Johnson, an employee of his cabinet-making business and a good friend of ours, to fetch Jase. Unbeknownst to Miss Kay, Chad took off toward Phil’s land in a pirogue, a small canoe-type boat, hoping to locate the blind they were in and get Jase to the hospital. Jase was in the duck blind skinning raccoons, and the next thing he knew, he heard Phil yelling angrily, “Who is this idiot paddling through my decoys?”

Across the water, Chad yelled, “Is Jase in there? His wife is in labor!”

At the news, Jase jumped into the boat, and they paddled back to Phil and Miss Kay’s house with the speed of an Olympic rowing team. Jase and Miss Kay hopped in the car and made it to the hospital in seventeen minutes, a trip that usually took about twice that long.

Everyone in the delivery room was laughing at the story, including me. I never knew whether the doctor thought it was funny or not. She certainly did not join in the lightheartedness the rest of us felt. Because my doctor was also one of my bosses, I respected her and yet felt a bit intimidated by her at the same time. Jase was not intimidated at all. He was so relaxed, and that alleviated all the stress and tension I had felt since I first arrived at the hospital. True to his personality, he kept most of the room enthralled and laughing at his stories. As a lifelong hunter, he is no stranger to blood and gore. He thought the surgical process was very interesting and wanted to study everything inside of me. I’m sure his comment that my insides looked like a deer he had skinned the previous day was the first of its kind uttered during a C-section.

At one point, the doctor said to him, “Jason, you have to be quiet now.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Because I’m getting close to the baby with this scalpel, and Missy has to stop laughing.”

“Oh,” he said. “My bad.”

As the doctor prepared to remove Cole, the room became quiet; I didn’t know exactly what was going on because I couldn’t see around the sheet, but I knew the time had come for our baby to be born. Jase watched everything intently. The doctor pulled on the baby, but he would not budge. In Jase’s words, “He just wouldn’t come out.”

So Jase decided to lend a hand. He reached into the area near where the doctor was working, which caused every person to freeze. The room fell completely silent. As Jase recalled later, the doctor’s eyes filled with fire, and she shot him laser-sharp looks. No words were spoken, but he immediately raised his hands as if to say, “Don’t shoot,” and backed off.

The doctor soon realized what was wrong. Cole’s umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck—twice. The doctor reached into my uterus and popped it off his neck. As soon as she did, Jase saw Cole flip into her hands, and the doctor was able to deliver him right away.

Despite the trauma of his birth, Cole suffered no residual effects of being tugged on with a cord around his neck while being cut out of the womb. In fact, he let out a loud cry as soon as he took his first breath. He was six pounds, nine ounces, with translucent skin that felt like velvet. He was the most beautiful baby I had ever seen and the softest, warmest bundle I had ever held. His perfectly round head was definitely different from Reed’s when he was born. Even though he was only a few minutes old, his cuteness factor was off the charts, and he had a personality to match. We could tell instantly that he would be a sweet, calm, easy-going child. He is still that way to this day.

Cole Foster Robertson has the name Cole because I wanted a one-syllable name, and Jase and I thought Cole was quite original. His middle name, Foster, comes from my well-loved maternal great-grandfather, Bill Foster. Not long after Cole was born, Jase and I realized lots of other parents were naming their sons Cole, perhaps also thinking the name was cool and unusual. It ended up being more common than we thought, but I cannot imagine him being named anything else.

Once again Jase and I were blessed with a healthy baby boy. Later, as I reflected on the series of events leading up to Cole’s grand entrance into the world, I thanked God that His hand had been on everything. From the moment I found out Cole was a breech baby, I didn’t hesitate to opt for a C-section rather than have the doctor turn him. Some people might call it a woman’s intuition, but I believe it was God guiding me and causing me to feel restless and uneasy about that option. Once Cole was born, I realized that had the doctor turned him with the cord already wrapped twice around his neck, he very well might not have survived.

That’s Cole

One of the stories that best illustrates Cole’s personality happened when he was three years and two months old. I was still working at the clinic, Reed was attending preschool five days a week, and Jase and I hadn’t found anyone to care for Cole while I was gone.

After a season of trial and error, we finally decided Jase would take Cole to work with him a couple of days a week, though the days were rarely consistent. At the time, Duck Commander was still headquartered at Phil and Miss Kay’s house, so Miss Kay usually ended up watching Cole while Jase worked, even though she also handled many of the business activities and all of the accounting for the company. I felt so relieved when we finally agreed to that arrangement. I knew Cole was in wonderful hands with his grandmother, and he enjoyed being at his grandparents’ house.

I called Jase every day he was supposed to have Cole. Outside of duck-hunting season, he left for work after I did, so I never had the satisfaction of seeing him go out the door in the mornings with Cole in tow. I didn’t doubt he would take care of Cole, but I’ll admit that I reminded him much more than was necessary: “You have Cole tomorrow. Don’t forget, okay?” and “You’re taking Cole to work with you today.”

On the days Jase had Cole, I couldn’t help myself; I called Duck Commander about 11:00 or 11:30 a.m.—just to check. For some reason, Jase found that annoying. After a couple of weeks of my phone calls, Jase finally said, “Quit checking on me. I know when I’m supposed to have Cole. I got this.”

One day, I couldn’t resist the urge and called anyway.

“How’s Cole?” I asked Jase.

“I don’t have Cole,” Jase responded.

Wondering if he was teasing me because I had called when I knew I shouldn’t have, I said, “You’re kidding, right? This is not funny.”

“Missy, I’m serious. I really do not have Cole,” he said, and I could tell by the tone of his voice that he definitely was not joking. He had left for work without Cole. Our three-year-old was home alone.

Terrified and panicked over where Cole might be or what could have happened to him, I fell out of my office chair and crumpled onto the floor. All sorts of scenarios raced through my mind. Was he hurt? Had he wandered outside when he realized he was home by himself? He could have walked to the road, fallen into a creek, or even been attacked by an animal in the woods. (We lived on about a three-acre lot in a rural area at that time.)

“Today is your day, Jase. You’re supposed to have him!” I said, immediately formulating a plan for what to do next.

I called home to see if Cole might answer. Jase called Mac, who worked at home, and asked him to look for Cole. Again, Mac came to our rescue. He jumped into his all-terrain vehicle and raced to our house. A few minutes later, he called Jase back and said, “Cole’s fine. I found him standing in your carport, completely dressed, with his jacket on, like he was supposed to go somewhere.”

Mac had scooped Cole up in his arms and said, “Hey, Cole. Everything’s okay. You’re going to come home with me. We’re going to call your parents, and your daddy is going to come and get you.”

Even though Jase was on his way, I left work, too, determined to make sure Cole was all right.

When I got home and asked him what he did while no one was home, he said, “I looked for you. Then played Nintendo for a while. Then I looked for you some more, but I couldn’t find you. I got something to eat and then put my clothes on and went outside.”

Once I saw that Cole really was okay and calmed down, I heard Jase’s side of the story. He had woken up at the usual time but did not rush to get to work. He made himself breakfast, took out the trash, then got ready for work, all while singing at the top of his lungs, not thinking anyone was around to hear him. He finally left the house around 9:00 a.m. without realizing that Cole was still asleep. Jase didn’t think to check on Cole because he thought I had taken to him to a babysitter.

Jase says I never told him he was responsible for Cole that day. I have a hard time believing that because Cole’s care was at the forefront of my mind every day, and I was very diligent about communicating with whoever would be taking care of him. If anything, my tendency was to over-inform people or remind them too many times. Jase and I either had a major communication problem or one of us had a major memory problem. We still do not know what really happened, but we can laugh about the situation now because everything turned out fine in the end.

I believe Cole is probably the only one of our children who could have handled such circumstances well. He was totally cool with being home alone for almost three hours. His even temper and level-headedness served him—and us—well that day; and those qualities continue to be a blessing to everyone who knows him. Cole is as mild-mannered and laid-back as anyone I have ever known. In many ways, he is a lot like Jase. He certainly inherited Jase’s analytical nature. Cole is not one to make rash decisions or let his emotions dominate him. He thinks things through, doesn’t hurry, and makes the best, most-informed decisions he can. He is a loyal friend and family member, who is kind and considerate of others, and is definitely a peacemaker.

It’s funny how my perspective has changed since I’ve become a mom—I can’t imagine my life without these two young men. I’m grateful that Reed and Cole love each other and are smart and ambitious in their own ways. They both love our family, and more importantly, they both love God and desire to live lives that please and honor Him. They do have several things in common, but their personalities and the ways they choose to do things are completely different. Any parent who has more than one child can definitely relate to this. No two children are alike, and that is what makes life fun, sometimes crazy, but always interesting. There is never a dull moment at our house.