Jacob turned 22 two weeks ago. My how time flies when you are old! Jacob was my first "baby" of the family and held that title for almost 10 years. He evidently still resents having his spot taken...but he needs to get over it!
Jacob was number 4. We moved to a bigger house in Clemmons that gave the kids more room to play. Rick worked furniture market twice a year where he was essentially gone for a month with premarket, market and post market cleaning for this one building. I had two deliveries where I barely made it to the hospital. Jacob wasn't due until Halloween, which was after market, but I had a history of going early. Rick didn't carry a pager or anything, so I generally had no way of getting in touch with him when he was in this building working. His dad kindly let him borrow his pager...which was helpful. It gave me peace of mind. I had changed doctors after Joseph so I had Dr. Anderson all primed for a quick delivery. On the day Jacob was born and it was during furniture market, I was having contractions all day and about the middle of the day, I felt my water was leaking. I hadn't done that before, but I paged Rick and got him to come home. The Dr. sent us on to the hospital in the early afternoon thinking we would be delivering pretty quick. This is where we learned how my labor really works. I had hard contractions, about 15 minutes a part....for quite a while (until time to push). I finally got to an 8 and my Dr. comes in and says he needs to take his father home (they had made a quick stop by!) and he would be right back. He no sooner got out of the hospital when I started needing to push. Thank goodness he lived close! He barely made it back to catch Jacob. Jacob was born on October 19th weighing in at 9lbs. 7 oz. I had gestational diabetes with him (and Joseph and Daniel) and even though I dieted correctly...he still was a good size. I have great memories of Jacob as a little boy. He did add to my gray hair though. At 18 months he could open all my doors and leave....and sometimes did. We had to put locks on everything....including the refrigerator. His favorite game was to take the eggs out and watch them break on the floor! I remember tying the front door closed because he had gotten up in the night and opened it and I thought he had gone outside! If you gave Jacob a handful of keys, he would figure out which went to what lock. He got into the vehicles a couple of times and used keys to knock them out of gear. I knew the Lord had a great work for him....because we didn't lose him when he was young. Jacob found out about the tooth fairy and thought it would be a great "get rich quick" idea. After he lost one of his front teeth, he forced the other one out. He didn't have any top teeth for a year! He found a dog skull in the woods and told his dad he was going to pull those teeth and collect money from the tooth fairy.
I am grateful for Jacob. He has provided much laughter and joy over the years with his quick wit. When Jacob was little he would read the encyclopedias at night. He has a great spirit, a great heart and great skill. I love you Jacob.
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