A Day To Remember...

Yes folks, it's been a while. Sorry for the absence. It’s been a tough couple of weeks that have left me largely uninspired. I think it’s behind me and today’s milestone certainly lifts me up higher than the tallest tree.

It was five years ago at around 3:00 pm when my wife called me at work and asked me to come home. She was a full nine months along. She had only called me home once before for a false alarm and I knew to respect her wishes since she hated the idea of crying wolf even though I had told her not to worry about stuff like that. Only 9 months prior to this date we had been struggling with the reality we were given from all the doctors that we would never have a child of our own when the love of my life came screaming from the bathroom with a test strip in hand “I’m pregnant!”. She had been dreading her annual GYN visit since taking a pregnancy test was required prior to her appointment. The guts a woman has to have to take that test after all she’d been through will never be lost on me. I could write a book on the improbability of it after all the science I’d been brought up to speed on during the years of doctor visits and the perfect storm of fertility maladies that had beset the two of us, but none of that mattered after that day.

When I arrived home, my wife was cleaning the house in an attempt to calm her contractions which seem to have worked by the time I hit the door. I then did what most men would have done; I walked over to the couch and took a nap. My slumber was shaken with my wife leaning over a chair and in heavy voice telling me her water had broken. No freak out on my behalf I must say. Once I got her into the car and turned the key, Pink’s “Get this Party Started” came blaring through radio speakers. The sign’s could not be ignored. At around 11:00 PM I watched my daughter take her first breath. She was so little. I have never felt more emotion all at one time ever in my life and probably never will again. Ecstatic at the sight of our precious little miracle and never more proud of my wife for being tough enough not only to carry and deliver her, but for finding the strength to stick it out during the very dark days preceding that fateful day the previous July. They just don’t make them like that anymore.

Now our little peanut is a big beautiful girl all of five years old. I can not believe how fast it’s all gone by. Since her arrival, I’ve felt like I’ve been given a whole new second life to live. One filled with the joy of all of us.

Katie often asks us to tell her the story of her birth which I and her mother are only glad to oblige. I think it reminds her of how absolutely special she is to us. Little girls universally adore stories and fairy tales of princesses being rescued from all the various perils that lurk in such fables. But the story of her birth is one that is real to her and us and more than any other story she has heard, or will ever hear, this particular story will always remind her that there is a God, and that miracles are indeed possible. She is the living proof.

Happy birthday my little princess and happy birthday Mrs. Alva!