This is an adventure...

Welcome to the outside world Hendrix! We have been waiting for you for so long, and now that we have finally met you I see that you were worth the wait!

It has been almost 8 months since we first learned about your imminent arrival... And each day brought with it excitement and questions and even more excitement... And now that you are here and I can hold you and listen to you breath and grunt and cry, I am overwhelmed with the love that I have for you... Each time I walk past your bassinet and see your adorable face, it's like I am seeing you for the first time... My heart skips a beat and is flooded with so much emotion that, were it not for both my hands placed flat on my chest, I am sure that it would spill out onto the floor! And I know that when you cry it usually means that you are unhappy about something, but I can't help but laugh at the way your chin shakes and your face gets so red... So I pull you close and assure you that everything is in fact OK... But I guess that doesn't quite express the situation... Because, ever since you got here, life has been irrevocably wonderful! Not to say that it has been easy, because it hasn't, and it certainly wasn't easy getting you here... But it has been undeniably and inconceivably wonderful! Which leads me to what I want to tell you.

This is an adventure.

On Saturday, me and your mommy... who, by the way, is the most amazing, caring, sincere, loving, truly beautiful person ever! You will learn this for yourself soon enough... I have always known that she was incredible, but this weekend, and in fact this whole pregnancy, has been a shining example of how brilliantly beautiful she is... She is so full of grace and love, that I am daily humbled by the incredible blessing of getting to love her and be loved by her. Anyways, I got sidetracked... As we were in the hospital waiting for you to show up, your mommy and I watched a movie... One of our favorite movies: The Life Aquatic. It is such a beautiful movie about love, and relationships, and the destructive nature of selfishness. Plus, Bill Murray is in the movie. You don't know who he is, but you will one day learn of his genious... (Also there are some pretty cool animals in it too.) I have seen this movie so many times, yet I was struck by the final scene of the movie... Struck in a way that I had never felt before. In the final scene, Steve Zissou, a washed up movie producer with no real friends and no real family, sits on some steps with a small boy. Throughout the movie he is so selfish and conceited, but by the end, he is changing. As he sits there, he says with the clarity that only comes when you feel loss and love and grace:

"This is an adventure."

As I watched the movie Saturday with your mother, in a chair next to her bed, waiting on you to arrive, I realized two things: First, I realized that that was something that you should know... As you begin your life, you should realize that it is an adventure. Sometimes life is amazing! You feel the sun on your face, and the sand between your toes and you know that happiness is warm and wonderful! But life isn't easy... Sometimes it's messy. Sometimes, it is actually quite awful. You will have times when you feel scared and alone. But in those moments, you will see that I love you... That your mommy loves you... That your friends and family love you... And, together, we will all come around you and love you. And in those moments, you will know that joy is real and lasting... It helps you through the dark, scary times in life. It doesn't run away from challenges... It pushes through.

And, Second, I realized that we (you, me and your mommy) are setting out on an adventure together. I doubt that it will ever be easy... But I KNOW that it will be incredible! I know that there will be times where we are frustrated with each other... I know that there will be times when you fall... But know this: we will always be there to pick you up when you do... There is nothing you can do to make us love you any less than we do now.

"Excited" is an inadequate word to express how I feel about this opportunity that your mommy and me have been given... You are our beautiful boy.

This is an adventure.