One year. One beautiful, beautiful year.

A year ago today, it was snowing hard.  I was in the hospital, admitted the night before.  Our brand new Jeep was the only vehicle making it easily up the steep hill to Waukesha Memorial.  The on-call doctor had told us to come in and see if it was time for Jack to make his appearance.  I wanted to go to Denny's first, but my husband insisted that we just trek through the snow and get to the doctor.

We should have gone to Denny's first.  They don't let you eat anything once they admit you.  Lunch was long ago, and I was starving.

The night was hard, and when morning finally came my husband had to leave to make sure the snow was plowed from the driveway and the front walk.  I wasn't going anywhere - I was in a lot of pain from the pitocin but we were a long way from seeing our baby.  When he came back he said he stopped at our favorite diner for breakfast.  Everyone there had wished us luck, and the cook prepared his order ahead of everyone else waiting for their meals because he knew my husband was in a special kind of a hurry.

We had bought the movie White Christmas and brought it to the hospital to watch, but one station was running a marathon of it all day, so we had our movie on replay.  I felt like I was going to be there forever, as each nurse reported such little progress.  Dan said Jack would be born in time for lunch.  It was 10:00 a.m.  I was highly doubtful.

It was my turn to be wrong.  Jack was born at 11:20 a.m. on Christmas Eve day.  Everyone marveled at his beautiful dark hair.  We marveled at everything about him.

We spent our first Christmas as a family of three in the hospital, with no visitors because of the bad weather.  We watched A Christmas Story and ate the surprisingly delicious hospital food and enjoyed our little boy.  It was the best Christmas ever.


And since then?  Every day is better than the one before it.


Happy First Birthday, Jack Donovan.