What a Difference a Year Makes ...

I'm feeling sentimental today ... its Brianna's first birthday and I keep looking at the clock and remembering where I was on this day last year. Of course, lying in a hospital bed waiting for her to make her arrival is how I spent most of the day, up until 9:55 pm that night when she arrived.


I was rocking her to sleep last night and remembering how it felt to have our "last meal" (it was Carino's and I had lobster ravioli if anyone's wondering) before heading to the hospital the night before her induction was scheduled. It was a very strange feeling, leaving the house that night and knowing that the next time I walked through those doors, I'd be holding a brand new baby ... one that I honestly had no idea how to take care of or what she was going to be like.  Would she take to nursing?  What would her sleep patterns be like?  How again did you change a diaper?  Looking back, it amazes me that we survived and even more, that she survived! 

So, today, I look back and remember all that she's accomplished in the last year and it makes me a bit teary-eyed to see how much she's changed.  This morning, as she was eating breakfast, I realized that her knees almost hang over the edge of the chair.  Her entire body used to span a space of less than 2 feet and now, she reaches the top of my thigh when she stands up next to me (no small feat even if I am on the short side!).  She's finishing up a growth spurt and suddenly, her wrists stick out past the ends of her shirt sleeves and her pants don't cover the tops of her boots any longer.  She looks more and more like a little girl and less like the cuddly, sleepy newborn I brought home a year ago.  She's opinionated and independent and that makes me fiercely proud of her.  She's also sweet and loving and so smart she still amazes her teachers at school (she made up her own sign for music last week!).  To top it all off, she's beautiful ... that heart wrenching, innocent beauty that only children have.

I'm sure I'll post up more birthday party pictures this weekend and a "what she's up to" post to go with them but for now, I'm just sentimental.  The last year has flown by at times and at others, its crawled.  I look at those first pictures of Justin and I holding her when she was just minutes old and compare them to the daughter I have right now and I wonder ... what will she look like at 2 or 6 or (heaven help me!) 16?  What kind of girl and woman will she grow to be? 

She's changed our lives so much that it has yet to amaze me what a difference the last year has made...