The French-Fry guy

Meet Harris Benjamin Pabst. Sometimes we call him Harry-B, but he would like to go down in history as the French Fry guy. He loves loves loves all things super hero but more than that he loves fried potatoes in all their many forms. He is absolutely obsessed with tator tots, hashbrowns, and most of all french fries. So much so that my mom created a book for him in which he gets to be a tator-tot shooting hero known as the French-Fry guy! But his real-life hero is my younger brother Jon. Harris wants to be just like him in every way. He's off to a great start too because he is totally into television, video games, eating his favorite foods and always sounding sarcastic and/or (sorry Jon!) irritated. We have to constantly talk about using a "nice, soft" way to talk to others because he is generally annoyed with anyone approaching him with anything but a french fry. His real-life super power is asking questions. He can (and does!) ask the same question a thousand different ways all the while applying his keen powers of persistence to wear you down and get what he wants. One time, he got a couple of dollars from his Papaw with which to buy some French fries for his birthday. He immediately began asking me,"When can we go get french fries? Can we get some french fries now? How many more minutes til' we go get french fries?" Frustrated I said, "Harris, do not ask me about those french fries one more time!" A few minutes later he approached, asking if he could tell me a joke. Here's the joke. Knock, knock. Whose there? Can we go get some french fries?
Harris was born with spina bifida (a hole in his spinal cord) and so he has required and will continue to require lots of what I call "medical maintenance"". He has had 8 surgeries in his short life (only 4 were more than outpatient procedures) the most recent being the most remarkable. He had an eight hour surgery last November to allow him to catheterize himself through his belly button (crazy-I know!) and clean out his bowel each night so now he can stay clean and dry throughout the day. Children with spina bifida always have major issues with bladder/bowel because the nerves on the spine that control this function are damaged and they can't feel what we feel. He has done well with this surgery-- a big part of our ongoing movement toward independence. He wears AFO braces on his legs but walks really well even without them and he has a VP shunt (small catheter-like drain inserted in his brain ventricle beneath his skull) to drain fluid off his brain. Sorry to give you lots of medical mumbo jumbo but it's hard to explain Harris without explaining Spina Bifida. It by no means defines him but it affects most aspects of his life. Having him in our family stretches us and teaches us on a daily basis and we feel blessed to have this "super"-hero in our midst!