You start with this little bundle of burrito. Then the legs and arms straighten, the melon head wobbles up right and before you know it Shrimp has grown into a four-legged octopus.
He walks, talks, asks awkward questions and repeats only the things he shouldn’t have heard. You credit him with his victories and take his faults as your own.
He grows into his name and out of his clothes, learns to read and write and each day swims further away.
But every year you can celebrate the arrival of the bundle, he no longer is – except when he’s asleep.