Seven years

All of my kids are amazing. Not perfect (or even close), but amazing. This post is in honor of CJ’s seventh birthday yesterday.

September 11, 2001 started for me with a phone call. “We’re under attack!” It ended with my shaking fingers holding a positive pregnancy test. I could not have been more shocked than I was at that moment. That was the day we found out Connor was on his way into our lives.

Days later, I remember screaming at God, with tears rolling down my face. “How are we supposed to be able to DO this!?!?!” One-year-old Abby, barely walking, patting my back in the bathroom while I puked my guts out over, and over, and over. Falling asleep in the ER after two bags of fluids and a big dose of phenergan. Slowly coming to terms with the fact I was going to be a mom again, ready or not.

Then it got better. I remember the day before he was born, going to work and making sure everything was set for my absence. Waking up early to go to the hospital, Abby safe with grandparents, sneaking a quick snack as we went out the door. Twelve hours later, a few quick pushes and there he was, red and wet and mad as a hornet, naked on my belly while Mike cut the cord. “How could I have doubted this?” I remember thinking.

A week of peaceful, joyful motherhood before everything descended into darkness for me. I don’t remember much from that time. Laundry and crying and sitting at work with Connor in my lap, or in the swing, or behind me in the pak-n-play. Five days in the hospital, sleeping next to his crib, waking up every time his oxygen levels dropped and set off the alarms. I don’t remember his first birthday. I remember leaving for Liberia a month later and finally waking back up to the world around me.

I remember leaving him at preschool for the first time, 16 months old, and how he took off his shoes and walked away without looking back. Singing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star in the car on the way home. Twice a day nebulizer treatments none of us enjoyed. Teaching him the “s” sound so that the rest of the world could understand what he was saying.

First day of preschool, kindergarten, first grade… Tucked in to bed with seven hugs, seven kisses, a song and a prayer. Waking up to tiny arms wrapped tightly around my neck. “I wanted to snuggle with you, mom.” Lightsaber fights and wrestling with dad on the living room floor. At the hospital after a fall last spring. “I told you it was broken,” he said.

“Say it again, mom. Out LOUD!”

“Say what?”

“Say, Connor is SEVEN!”

Seven years of joy and tears and worry and happiness. I’m so thankful for the blessing of being a mom.