Five years ago today

Five years ago today my firstborn entered into the world. She came at 8:45pm on a snowy Friday night in a hospital just north of Chicago. I went to the hospital the day after my due date for an induction -- I was just too uncomfortable to stay pregnant any longer, and frankly, I was too impatient and wanted to meet my little girl!

So at 6am we went in, excited, nervous, and just a bit scared out of our minds. At 8am (1cm dilated) they started the pitocin drip. At 3pm (3cm dilated) the doctor broke my water to speed things along. At the same time, the doctor attached a monitor to the baby's scalp. At 3:05pm I decided these contractions are just too unbearable, and asked for the epidural. A few contractions later, I no longer felt anything from the waist down. The epidural was so effective that I couldn't even move my legs.

At 8pm (or was it 8:30?) I was determined to be fully dilated, so at the nurse's direction I began to push. Just a few pushes later, Eliz (Iza? Zabe? We're still working on a nickname...) was born at 8:45pm. She weighed 7lb, 7oz, and measured 20.5 inches long. She was perfect. She still is.

Despite our parenting skills (or lack thereof), she's a sweet, smart, and silly little girl who loves to learn about the world all around her. She can read (with so much expression!), count by 2s, 5s, 10s, all the way to a few hundreds, tell time on a dial clock, and add/subtract like nobody's business. She loves to sing, play games, put together jigsaw puzzles, and work on the pages of her workbooks. She hates to be told what to do when she doesn't feel like it, waking up earlier than she wants to, going to bed earlier than she wants to, and doing things that are more difficult than she thinks she can do.

As a baby she was so easy. She nursed like a champ, slept through the night (well, 6 hours) at 6 weeks, and hardly ever cried. She never even got her first cold until she was almost a year old, and diaper rashes were pretty much a foreign concept for two years. She was never picky with clothes or food, and made me feel like a parenting pro. Of course it wasn't my parenting skills that made her this way -- it was all God's grace. He knew I can't handle things otherwise, I'm sure!

I treasured her baby words. Pim-dae for chim-dae (bed). Dda-ddeu-geo for vegetables. Da-da for doggy. Dugga-dugga for the letter W. Her grabbing one hand with the other, and pumping it back and forth as she signs "baby."

I loved her made-up songs. My favorite was her singing in the car about a month before her third birthday: "I love my car, I love my bed. I love my house. 'Cause, I love my house. I love my car. I love my bed. I love my bed. I love my ..."

She's grown up so much now. A big sprout, her clothes are a bit too short on her, and yet some of her skirts are still too big around to stay up on her waist. She has displayed the ability to play peacefully with her little sister without fighting (when she feels like it). She even shows a nurturing side when she feels like it, running to the bathroom to help Abi with the toilet paper or washing her hands, helping unbuckle her from her car seat when we arrive at our destination.

Happy birthday, my first baby. I love you. May God bless you and grow you to become a lovely woman, one who takes care of the people around her, one who is well-loved and well-liked, one who fears the Lord.