Happy Birthday Babies ooooh I love you so!

***This is a re-post from last year, with the proper updates. And it swells my heart just as much this year, just as much as it does every year.

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Quote of the Day:
"Parents who do not have Internet should have their children taken away." ~~Peggy Hill

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Happy Birthday, my darlings! You are 12 years old today!

Did you know that my due date was June 4?
But my impatient children arrived February 13, 1995.

24 hours of labor, which the doctors tried to stop.
My son came first, in the usual way. (in this picture he was actually one month and one day old)


As they were wheeling me to recovery, my daughter's heart rate dropped to zero, and she was removed by emergency C-section fifty-six minutes after her brother was delivered. (and she is one month and one day old here)


I was stapled from head to toe, practically. Or at least that's how I felt.
And I fell in love with morphine.

In recovery I heard my mom & stepmom talking about the children~I told everyone to shut up shut up shut up because I didn't want to hear that they had died.

But they hadn't. Thank you, God.
They struggled for every single breath. They fought to live.

And so they did.
Thank you, God.

For this little miracle....(my girl at about 2 months)



and this little miracle...(my boy at about 3 or 4 months)


The doctors gave them less than a 50% chance of survival.
We fooled 'em good, din't we?
About a pound each, about a foot long...
My girl here is about a year old, this is one of my favorite pictures of her~she looks so pensive.


And here is my sister with two skinny little year-and-a-half(ish) babies:


One morning I discovered that my daughter knew how to climb into her brother's crib..


And she always....


...always has loved him best.

(yes, her mouth is blue...she was putting eye shadow on. On her lips. Yep. You should have seen what she did to me earlier that day with lipstick...whilst I was catnapping on the couch.)

When she was about two, this is what "Go get ready for bed" meant:



Already trying to fill mommy's shoes, trailing that damned oxygen hose behind her (that I tripped on a thousand and one times):


Here's my little guy at about 6 or 7 months old, not too long after he finally got to come home from the hospital...


He had the softest, wispiest hair so I let it grow and grow...he's about two-ish here:


And second grade...


And last year (4th grade)....




And TODAY.





How could I not believe in a higher power? In miracles?

I love you, my babies. I'm thankful for every breath that you take, every blink of your eyes, every morning that you wake. I love you.
If all the world was a beach, I would love you more than all the grains of sand added together. Times ten thousand.

Happy, happy birthday.