My Emily

Dearest Emily,

You were and still remain a gift to me. You are priceless. You are beautiful inside and out!

On this day twenty years ago I was VERY excited, ecstatic actually. The night before I hardly slept because it was so much better than Christmas!

We were at the hospital around now, ready for induction which was a miracle since my amniotic fluid had been leaking since 19 weeks and they had stopped my labor many times.

My labor with you was easy in contrast to my first because I was not at a navy hospital. Before I felt any real pain they gave me an epidural! After a very short labor you eased into the world, peacefully and quietly and just looked around to see what was going on. You were and are so very sweet, loving and gentle.

When you were little you just wanted lots of hugs, snuggles and smiles. I was happy to oblige. I just wanted to sit and hold you and stare at the miracle of YOU!

Mark came along and you two became like twins. Sometimes I noticed that the two of you seemed to be communicating silently, through "eye language". As I have told you, you were very observant but were saying very little (after all you had to compete with Lindsey for speaking time) until one day I heard you burst into a song with all of the lyrics completely correct, singing an "I'm Sorry" song to Mark when you accidentally bumped him.

You also showed us how brave you were. You were in children's choir and couldn't have been more than 2.5 or 3 years old. This was your first time to sing in front of a church and this was a fairly large church AND it was packed that day! There may have been 500ish people there. Every one of you were nervous. All of your eyes were huge as you whispered your song. Miss Lynda kept motioning for you all to get louder. Suddenly one little voice rang out, like a solo with back-up singers. It was YOU! My best friend and I were in tears. Everyone came up to me after church and said, "Was that Emily? I've rarely even heard her speak before this!"

As people I am certain that some of our qualities are "nature" and some are "nurture" but somewhere along the way we choose. And I am so glad you have chosen to be a loving, committed, compassionate person.

Remember, your life is a book and so far only a few chapters have been written. The rest are empty pages, what will you write?

I am very proud of you and being your mom has been wonderful. Happy Birthday, Sweetheart!

I LOVE YOU!