Audrey

I like Audrey's name because it sounds a little bit like adore me, and that's what we do. We adore her all day long.

Dear Audrey Lynne, August 26, 2014

Daddy and I were thrilled today to find out you are a girl. Even better was hearing how perfectly healthy you are. You sure move a lot these days! Thanks for kicking hard enough for Daddy to feel. I know that meant a lot to him. You're 20 weeks old, so it looks like you'll be born on January 19th after all. Finally, something to look forward to during that perfectly dreary month! I hope you're pretty (life is so much kinder to pretty girls), but if you're not, it's enough to be smart and nice. Please don't be too girlie. I think girls who are prissy are so one-dimensional, don't you? Get dirty once in a while. Go fishing. Fall off a horse. Explore a cave. Get a scar. Live. Of course I want you to have everything I have and more. Every parent does! But if I start harping on you too much, you give your momma a hug and a kiss and tell her to chill, ok? Daddy might need help remembering this too sometimes. Love you forever, Mom.

It's not so easy to write in my journal these days, as my belly is very much in the way. I am now 28 weeks pregnant, and thrilled to finally be in my third trimester. If Audrey were to be born today she would survive. What a blessing- an amazing GIFT- it is to have gotten this far! Now it is no longer a question of if she'll live, but when she'll be born. I am going to have a baby.

Right before Audrey was due, Jason and I noticed that our dog Scarlett seemed to be putting on weight. She had recently been in heat, but we'd put her in a special belt to prevent her from breeding. Nevertheless, we got the shock of our lives one night when I laid my head against her belly and felt it pitching and rolling under my cheek. Puppies. She delivered them just a couple days after we confirmed her pregnancy at the vet's. I knelt beside her on our hardwood floor with my own huge, pregnant belly getting in the way, and helped Scarlett give birth to NINE puppies. Audrey was born about a week after, so we were basically caring for 10 infants at the same time.

I can't even write Audrey's name without getting emotional. She has crowned my life with more happiness than I ever thought possible... Jan confessed to having taken caster oil the night her daughter was born. I've always heard caster oil was useless, but I was desperate, so we bought a bottle on the way home. I took two tablespoons in my hot chocolate before I went to bed. I woke up at 1:00 in the morning with the most excruciating cramps imaginable... I labored for 12 hours. She came out red and screaming, exactly what every mother hopes for.

I couldn't wait to hold Audrey, and when I did, the bond between us was instantaneous.

I was so impatient to give Audrey her first bath in the morning and dress her in her special outfit.

Dear Peaches,

I wish I could take a mental picture to keep with me always, a little snapshot of you laying on your belly, smiling up at me. You want to crawl so badly, and you keep lifting your chest off the floor and making little chimp noises. Squeaky, you were born with a gift. You make everyone around you happy. You are Brigham City peaches. You are the first snow of Christmas time, and the smell of the heater turning on in September. You are a jar of current jelly, sparkling in the sun. You are dog whiskers and the velvet of a horse's nose. You are a summer thunderstorm. You are the millionth kiss shared between lovers. You're a $1.50/hr. raise, a pinch on the bottom, the discovery of a new, fabulous book series. You are the way it feels to balance on railroad tracks, traveling to nowhere. You're cinnamon toast. This is how you make me feel every day. I love you. Mom.

It just so happens that this post landed on Audrey's birthday. What a strange and sweet coincidence, very much in keeping with this strange and sweet blog. It felt very odd to share my private letters and journal entries on this public site at first. Then I realized what a therapeutic and beautiful thing that is, to bare your heart to the world without fear or apology. Everyone should take out their old letters and line them up and read through them again, especially their love letters. This blog has been a love letter in a way; a love letter from me to my memories. I've been so blessed.

Love always, Jess.