It is 12:00 o’clock on the dot of my daughter’s first birthday.
We’ve anticipated this day for weeks… hell for months and months. Where I last left off, Layla was twelve weeks and I already anticipated the day she would turn a year old. Not oh my god I can’t wait until her birthday!” anticipation, but “oh my god this is eventually going to happen” sort of anticipation.
I’m up very late tonight, I guess because I wanted to be a part of this moment. It’s almost like New Years times eight-hundred, your birthday times eleventy-billion. It is so huge and so big because a year ago today I woke up for my doctor’s appointment thinking happy thoughts, hoping that for once when I saw her she would have good news for me.
But she did not have good news. She set the pace for what went down as the scariest day of my life. I mean really really REALLY scary. It was not that joyous, exciting moment so many other parents experience. But … regardless of how terrifying the beginning may have been, everything worked out better than I could imagine.
Here we are a year later. She dances, she sings and loves hot dogs. She yells Mama when she’s mad. She is losing her baby fat but was once so chubby you’d never know she was born six weeks early. She has a great sense of humor and a great bond with our dog Bubba, the last of our dogs who I would expect to have a bond with our baby.
We got her quite a few gifts that I’m sure will entertain her for about 20 minutes before the empty boxes take over. On Saturday our family is coming over to eat, visit, and celebreate our baby girl. She’s given me a new outlook on life that is brighter and happier than anything I’ve ever experienced.
If I give her anything, I hope it is knowing and feeling that she is loved by so very many people.