Friday, February 16, 2007

Happy Birthday, Evie!

Today is my first daughter's first birthday. I remember around this time last year, when Megan and I had lunch at a local restaurant on Valentine's Day, and then went in to the hosptial for her induction. At this point, Evie was two weeks late, and according to the prevailing medical wisdom, the womb becomes a hostile place for a baby after about two weeks or so. On the advice of our physician, then, we checked in to DuPont Hospital in order to start the long, painful (for Megan, especially) process of labor.

Two days of increasingly painful contractions later, a different doctor (not our physician, but a very nice lady) recommended a C-section due to failure to progress. At that point, we felt as if we had come that far, we might as well finish the process, so we agreed to the C-section, and not 20 minutes later, I got to see Evelyn's face for the first time.

She was a pretty big baby, weighing in at a massive 10 lbs., 8 oz, with the chubbiest cheeks you'd ever seen. Holding her for the first time, standing in the corridor outside the OR while they finished taking care of Megan, I don't remember feeling much at all, except relief that both the baby and Megan were okay.

One year later, I feel like things have finally started to sink in. Evelyn's life, her views, her character, her memories of growing up--many of those things are directly or indirectly going to be influenced by our parenting and the type of home we give Evie. My prayer is that her childhood is a happy, stable one and that she grows up knowing and valuing the things that are truly important in life, particularly a relationship with God in the person of Jesus Christ.

But that's all for the future, right?

For now, we've got a birthday party planned for tomorrow--I'll try to post pics here on the blog. If you have any birthday wishes or comments, I'll pass them along, though it seems most likely that they won't have much of an impact on her yet, seeing as how she can only say about 20 words or so. More on her party on Monday!

3 comments:

Jess said...

Happy 1st Birthday Evie! I hope you had a wonderful birthday party. You have the most wonderful parents in the world and I know, by God's grace, they will provide you with an amazing childhood and teach you all about our Lord that loves you so much! God bless you in the coming year!

ldmiller said...

Happy Birthday Evie! Ihope this blog is still around when you learn to read. Then you can read this comment for yourself.

Hack said...

hey! evie's birthday is three days before my half-birthday. nice. i just read your last few posts. irwin left a comment that you were 'putting me to shame'. i suppose she meant in frequency of posting?

anyway, about the five seconds of fury, i think what happened was a retroactive territorial pissing with coke (that i only now realize that i paid for) as a surrogate for urine. thankfully. a seat was vacated, i claimed it, anger, rage rather, was provoked. and for that i paid a horrible price.

i once threw water on a martial arts master in a bar because he was giving me a hard time for not remembering his name. perhaps this incident was a kind of carbonated karmic retribution. my name is not earl.