Four!

My baby girl is four this week! Well, technically she is my older girl, but since I am in denial that neither she nor her 15 month old little sister are really 'babies' anymore, I am officially declaring her forever my baby girl.

I asked her tonight if she remembered being born. (This picture was taken just minutes after). She gave me a look–four years old and she already has a look!–and was like, Uh, No.

Ha. So much for all those books I read with titles like 'Children Remember Birth.' But I remember. I remember bouncing on my yoga ball all through the night and then looking down at her, all red and wrinkly as I lay in bed SO glad to have labor over. Not that it wasn't beautiful and great. We'd been planning to name a girl 'Samantha', but I took one look at her and knew from the first instant I laid eyes on her she was Isabella. My poor husband! That name hadn't even been on our list of possibles, so he was a little surprised.

She was born SCREAMING. I'd also read all those books about how the first hours after birth are such a lovely bonding time. Bella screamed at the top of her lungs for 45 minutes with her eyes screwed up tight shut. Then she fell sound asleep. I remember lying in bed listening to her breathe on one side of me in the bed and Nathan breathe on the other side and thinking, Holy cow, what have I done?

(Here's me with my midwives. This is when she'd finally fallen asleep.)

There haven't been too many times in my life when I've heard God's voice, but I heard it then. I remember lying there and I heard–I truly did–hear God laugh, and tell me, This is the baby you want.

And you know, God was right. She never cried like that ever again. Actually she would probably win the award for world's easiest, most peaceful and happy baby. Not that I wouldn't have loved her just as much if she'd had colic, but she was easy on us, for sure.

Four years later, I just watched her carefully make one bracelet from a kit someone gave her for herself, and then just as carefully and totally of her own accord make the other one (there were 2) for her baby sister. She's still–always–the baby I want. Happy birthday, baby girl!