Happy birthday, Casper! Why we gave you a funny name.

Well, Casper turned 2 last Saturday. Part of me thinks, JUST two??? I feel like I’ve known him my whole life, and I can’t imagine life without him. He is also a very big 2 year old, so that might do it too. The other part of me thinks, WHAT? TWO?? Already??? Where did my chunky baby Casper go?

We love this boy. We love that while he still tries to carry as many toys in his arms as he can, he will still drop his toys in front of Dawnette for her to play with them. We love that he barely has a morsel of artisan in him, but loves order. Instead of coloring, he just grabs the green crayons first, then busily lines up the crayons in a neat line. He also loves to take his shoes out of his shoe drawer and make “trains,” and during bath time, lines his ducks up in a row and yells, “DUCK TRAIN!”

He has this super sweet smile when he thinks Dawnette is being cute, and sometimes, he yells for her from his crib, “Mei-mei!!!” He’ll also crawl around with Dawnette and babble like her, and she has a special laugh just for when he cracks her up.

Casper loves to chew on his blankets and hum as he is falling asleep and as he wakes up. He loves to read, and loves to take his time pointing at every little thing on the page, asking, “Buh-dah!?” (What’s that?)

During dinner time, he loves to put food/utensils/cups on his head and yell, “HAT!!!” and dinner time is never complete without him asking Dale and I to do “woh-bot” (robot) impressions, whereas Dale and I often pretend to be robots short circuiting because of our newfound feelings of love for one another. He also loves to eat Dawnette’s leftover baby food for dessert, which is gross to me, but it’s healthy and the food doesn’t go to waste, so I won’t complain.

Sometimes people ask us why we named him “Casper.” Sometimes people don’t, because they are afraid we named him after the friendly ghost, and they would rather not offend us. Casper is named after a Dutch man, Casper Ten Boom, who hid Jews in his house during the Holocaust with his daughters, one of which is the popular Corrie Ten Boom, who wrote The Hiding Place. He raised his daughters to love the Lord and to love people with all their hearts, even if it meant losing everything.

Our prayer is that God develops our Casper to be passionate for the Lord, to defend, protect, and speak for those who can not speak for themselves, and to be a father who teaches generations after him to do the same.

Happy birthday, sweet Casper!