Happy 2011

Okay, so the New Year is upon us. Incidentally, I am now a year older, and don't even get me started about the Baby New Year stuff. I heard my whole life how I was the second baby born that year, and thus got the shaft.)

2011 has to be better than 2010.

Of course I started off 2010 with contractions. But 2010 was also the Year of Zachary. With this in mind, it was all worth it. But I remember that first trip to the hospital like it was yesterday. Crushing because I had held out hope that my pregnancy with Zach would be so different from the one with Evan. When I felt that first contraction, I knew exactly what it was. I held my belly and breathed deeply and waited. The next came 6 minutes later, and then 6 minutes after that. And I cried. Oh, how I cried. I didn't even tell my doctor right away. I continued having them like that for weeks before I finally admitted to my doctors what was going on. It took them getting to be 2 minutes apart before I told them I couldn't take it, and I admitted in defeat that it had been going on for some time. I know this seems crazy, but I didn't want to admit what was going on. And I had been to the show before and knew what followed. My hope is that you, the reader, will never have to hear your baby referred to as a non-viable fetus like I did with both boys. Because even at the size of a bean, he was still our baby. Somehow we made it through, though.

2010 saw Evan turning 9 years old. Nine! My baby! And when I stepped away from work and pre-medicine and I looked, his face stopped having the roundness of a baby's and took on the angles of John's face. He is in the midst of the last of his primary school years. Before I know it, he'll be a teenager, too cool for mom. And then he'll be in a cap and gown, and I will be regretting each and every minute I allowed to slip by without appreciating it fully. Children grow all too fast.

And my John and our 10-year anniversary. I found a gray hair on his head for the first time this year. And his crow's feet got a little more noticeable. Yet when I was reflecting back and looking at the pictures of the day we married, he looked the exact same to me. I don't know how this is, other than that he is still my JohnJohn.

My family is on the cusp of some great opportunities of which I cannot speak just yet, but I am convinced that 2011 is going to be stellar as I continue on with the three men in my life in this, my 34th year.

So Happy New Year. Be blessed. Be happy. Be healthy.