Happy Birthday, WG!

Four years old. It's crazy because I feel like WG was a baby last week. I blinked and now she is a little girl....

We had a nice day today. WG's birthday is bittersweet for me. Of course it's a joyous thing to be celebrated, but it's also the anniversary of the beginning of a very scary time for Tim and I. It's a difficult thing to explain to people who have not been affected by prematurity. Watching your child struggle to live when life has hardly begun is something no parent should have to do. It is life-altering. Every year the memory gets easier but I think it will always be something we think about on her birthday. WG and I had a relaxed day. We snuggled in the morning and around 10:30 am, which, incidentally, is about the time she was born, she asked me to "tell (her) the story about when she busted out of (my) tummy." She was particularly interested in the part where Tim and I ran around like crazy people at 4 am trying to pack bags since my water broke a month early and we didn't have the hospital bags packed. She wanted to know what we took with us. I told her that I only remembered what we forgot to pack: underwear, toothbrushes, basic essential items.... We looked at her hospital anklet which shocked both of us with it's smallness. I held it to her ankle now and it didn't even go half way. We also looked through her NICU baby book which has pics and stats from that time and is one of her favorite things to look at. We had cake and presents when Tim came home from work. I pushed the "easy" button this year and bought a gluten-free cake, chicken nuggets and tator tots from the organic grocery store. WG wanted to eat her cake first so we had backward dinner tonight: dessert first, then dinner. She was so excited about blowing out the candles that we lit them for her twice.

She (of course) loved all her presents. Aunt Beth, she opened the card you sent, took out the fabric and started waving it around yelling, "A fat quarter! I got a fat quarter for my birthday!!!!" I'm still on the hunt for a needle guard to get her started sewing on the machine.... I'll have to take some pics of her creations. She does a whole lot with my scraps and a bunch of straight pins!