7 years. Seven years have passed since I gave birth to my oldest daughter. As most of you know, she died in my womb and then we birthed her and held her still body. It was heart-wrenching, but beautiful. The peace that I experienced as I held her little body in my arms was incredible. We miss her, but the ache, the pain is gone. We know that one day we will hold her in our arms again and she will be whole. She will be full of life again, and that is the day that we live for.
Last night, I read through my journal that I wrote at that time. It is full of pain, and tears filled my eyes more than once. But it is also filled with hope and it is filled with the evidence of God working in our lives. God promised to carry us and he did. He held us and comforted us and I am so thankful for every step of our journey. I am thankful for the pain that opened our hearts wider to God and to his creation. To beautiful, hurting people all around us.
I think I will share some of those entries with you in the weeks to come. I will also finish the birth story I started to write a couple years ago. Oops!

Kalila Dorothy, April 26, 2002
Her name means Precious - Gift of God. Kalila is an Arabic term of endearment and Dorothy is my middle name and the first name of both of my Grandmothers, I always planned on giving it to my first born daughter, so I did.

My journal post from the day Kalila was born.

To my precious one,
I have loved you since before I knew you existed. You have been growing inside of me for almost five months. I have thought of you each day with love, hope and excitement as well as with fear and anxiety over the future. When I first felt your stirrings inside of me, it was Easter weekend and we were at Nana’s. I felt utter joy - you were real! All the following week (your 18th), when I would sit still in the evenings with your aunties (with your cousins in their tummies), I would feel your movements.
I am so thankful for that time.
At night, your Daddy would talk to you and hug you - we were anxiously awaiting the time when you could hear our voices and we were trying to choose your special lullaby.
On the Monday after you turned 18 weeks old, we went to have an ultrasound done. I was so excited! We all were, we would finally get to see you. When the sonographer was done, she went and got Daddy and your brothers. We saw your beautiful, perfect form, lovely legs and toes, arms and hand. You waved to us, we were so thrilled that you were saying hi to us, but I guess it was good bye. (The boys always talk of her waving good bye. to this day.) That is how the boys remember you. I am so thankful that we had that opportunity to see you and that you knew us already. You heard your brothers playing, and all of our family times and knew our love.
I love you.
We watched you gulping and I imagined you nursing at my breast and greedily gulping. When I saw your heart beating, I was ecstatic, 154 beats per minute. I had been longing to hear that sound, but the sound was off, so we never did hear your heart beat.

Later, after she was born:

I felt such peace as I watched you laying in the bassinet, curled up as if asleep. Holding you in my hand, I just love you. I can’t imagine having to wait my entire life to hold you whole and full of life. I long to hold you at my breast and watch you eat, stroke your cheek and whisper sweetness in your ear. I love you so much.
Kalila Dorothy, you are the baby girl I have dreamed of since I was a little girl. Your brothers wished and prayed for a little sister.

Thinking of you my precious daughter and of all the other mommy’s who are missing their babies.

Baby Zed is teething. I have done this a time or two before (like 4!), but he is, seriously, so very miserable! Baby Zed is the world’s happiest baby, he is always laughing and smiling his ‘light up your world’ smile at everyone, the one that starts in his eyes and quickly travels through the rest of his body. The one that stops strangers in the street to goo and giggle at him.

Today? That smile is absent. It has been replaces with red, teary eyes and swollen, bleeding gums. One toothy is peaking through and the other bottom middle is ripe to blossom. I finally got him tylenolled up and napping, I hope he is feeling a bit better when he gets up. Everyone in the house does!

(As I type, Girly (3.5) is giving me a pedicure. I have nail polish all over my feet!)

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Life Swap?

I think I forgot to tell you all a funny thing that happened to me this summer. I got an email, supposedly from the show Wife-Swap, telling me that they had read my blog and thought our family would be great for their show. When I opened that, I laughed out loud and said, “Well, I guess that confirms it, we are freaks!” I haven’t actually watched the show, but I would imagine if someone thinks we are fascinating enough for tv, they must think we are a bit out of the ordinary. 5 kids, homeschooling, in the middle of renos… craziness to be sure, interesting? I don’t know. But hubby and I thought it was hysterical.

Anyway, the other day at dinner it was very loud. All the kids were acting nutty, I am sure it must have been a full moon or something. Or they were all coming down from a 3 day Halloween sugar high. In the midst of this craziness, I turned to my hubby with a somewhat helpless smile,
“Remember when Wife Swap sent me that email? At this moment I might just say yes. Yikes!”

Later when I thought a bit about it, I thought they would swap me with a woman with an opposite lifestyle to mine. So maybe I could go to the gym, have a massage and a manicure, lunch with friends, hmmm… not so bad…

Then I went to kiss my babies goodnight. I sang them lullabies and got 27 kisses from my Monkey boy and 10 hugs from Girly. My 11 and 14 year old boys kissed me goodnight and wanted me to sing to them as well. Still! Then I crawled into bed with arms around my teensy sweetheart and in the arms of my big sweetheart and thought how there was no where else I would rather be. I am so blessed.

Sweet nothings from my angels before bed.

Girly, “Mama when someone says God loves you it means that Jesus love you and you love me Mama, and I kinda like you.”

Monkey, “Mom, you have unlimited hugs and kisses. Right? You never run out of kisses for us or hugs for us. Right? You could hug and kiss people all day and all night. but you would have to keep your hands on them. Right?”