Happy Birthday Tim!

Tim and the Cookie Monster

Tim and Me in the Garden

         

             Being the oldest has its disadvantages, it means that your parents were likely inexperienced and you would most probably end up being a guinea pig for the sake of your future siblings. In addition your parents were more cautious and stricter with you as well.

            Timothy or Tim as he likes to be called is my first born but despite all the cautious upbringing, he turns out just fine.  I remember looking at all the Montessori schools in Boston and the surrounding areas just to make sure that we found the best one for him when he first started school.  One of the fears that a mother with two boys has is that they may one day want to join the army.  I should have been warned when he asked for a big bucket of soldiers in various poses and spent hours playing with them in his room arranging them in various battle formations. In his last year at the Boston College Law School, Tim announced that he was joining the US Army as a JAG (Judge Advocate General).  He was posted to Fort Bliss in El Paso and was almost deployed to Afghanistan but eventually that was canceled, a big sigh of relief from us but he was greatly disappointed.  Now he is posted to Fort Bragg in North Carolina, much closer to  home. 

Tim in the First Armored Division

          

           Tim is always rooting for his siblings.  When Cara was born he took to her right away, there was no sense of being displaced.  When Cara and Charles ran their first marathon in Vermont, he jumped in the last third of the marathon to run with Cara despite having no previous training in running and coaching her to the finish line.  She would have given up if he was not there encouraging her all the way.  

Tim and His Baby Sister, Cara

          

          The following year in 2007, Tim joined the Legal Eagles Running Club to train for the Boston Marathon.  He and I frequently met for lunch on the weekends and when I learned that he was training for the marathon I was then training to run “the Boston Run to Remember” half marathon. I quickly changed that to a full especially when he said that I could do it if I had run up to 17 miles as one of my long runs in my training while his siblings were more skeptical.  And so we did the 2007 Boston Marathon, our first; he running with the Boston College Law School with the theme of “Running of the Bulls”. Since then Tim has run several marathons despite having a late start comparing to his siblings and he and I ran the New York Marathon in 2009. We share our love for the Boston Redsox and celebrated its becoming the World Series Champion this year.

Tim and Mom Running the Boston Marathon in 2007

          

Tim and Me at the Baseball Game

            He believes in keeping traditions and so our Cape Cod vacation, Thanksgiving and Christmas, that is all family gatherings carry wonderful memories for him.  When he is home for Christmas, there is always a set of things that we all have to do as a family for it to be perfect.

Cara, Tim, Me and Charles at Cape Cod

Christmas at Belmont

Almost a year and half ago, Tim got married to Ju-Lin whom he met in college.  Like me she is also from Malaysia, what are the odds of that happening?  We are all very happy for them and their new adventurous life together.  I am a very happy and lucky mother.

Tim and Ju-Lin

         

My BD Present to Tim from Nsanje

 Happy Birthday Tim!