a clean, well-lighted place

Happy Birthday number FIVE, Mia!

I have been thinking a lot the past couple of days about this morning in 2003. Stacy was complaining that she felt pain in her back and sides--pain that we might have recognized as labor pains, except that this was three months early, and we had been to our "how-to-be-pregnant" class only once, thanks to a November thunderstorm. I went on to campus to teach my eight a.m. Freshman Comp. class (the best class of students I ever had, thus far!) betting that Stacy would feel better later. She did feel better later, but "later" was after delivering Mia via emergency c-section, and getting and recovering from the flu.

Mia was so terribly tiny. She was bright red, and I watched the doctors (who were pretty freaked out, in my opinion) cover her with saran wrap to help keep her warm. About then, my mom and Suzy showed up, and Nana, too. I was in a daze, but I remember other people coming up to the nursery window to coo at their new baby. After showing off her new nephew, one lady asked me which one was mine; her face changed when I told her my daughter was the tiny one surrounded by doctors.

Mia and I took our first trip to Dallas together that day on a fixed-wing care-flight plane. Before I left Methodist Hospital that night with Dianne Betts (the coolest lady I know, to this day!), I got to touch Mia for the first time. All I touched was her toe--I kissed it before I left and I told her that I loved her and asked her to fight.

The day after she arrived, Jason took off work and drove up to Dallas to take care of me. Evidently, I was a little freaked out! He took this photo to show Shannon how small Mia was.

I am so glad she is a fighter! I don't even mind her being a little stubborn now that she is a big girl! She blesses me every single day, and has done so, now, for five years straight. Her birthday is more to me than any other.