Charley is born!

Yesterday we had free tickets to attend a family event concert event at the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. I put our name in for a drawing a while back and we "won" tickets. So thrilling. Charley was excited to go to a concert. We arrived early and were standing and waiting for the doors to open and who should step off the elevator - Mckenna! Charley's good friend Mckenna and her family also won tickets! It was such an ironic moment...if ironic is the right word! Five years ago yesterday we hung out with Molly and Gary and watched a Packer game on a Sunday afternoon. All day I felt a little off...heck, I was three days overdue! I started getting little pains but it never clicked that they were contractions until Molly pointed it out. So for the first few hours of labor we hung out with our best friends Molly and Gary. Hanging out with them yesterday was perfect!

That night our adventure to having Charley enter the world took place. We went to the hospital around 7 to be sent home around 9 after giving me a sleeping pill- like I was going to sleep. I was in so much pain already! By 11 we were heading back into the hospital, epidural at 1, and around 8 o'clock I began pushing and at some point told my doctor he was lying to me about only having three more pushes to go...let it be known he was correct.

Charley entered our world at 8:55 and his life began.

Daddy cut the cord and parents we became.

I remember those first 2 days spent figuring it all out at the hospital. Many moms want to get out of the hospital and get home. For me, when we left I felt a little scared and knew I would miss having the guaranteed support. I still wonder how the nurses can bring all these babies into the world and not want to find out who they became! I guess it is part of the job. You can never get that moment back when you become a parent for the first time. But it is just as awesome the second time around.

A child's birthday might be about parties, balloons, presents, candles, and cakes. But for a woman and a man - it is about when life became more about someone else - it is when they were transformed into the lifelong roles of MOM and DAD!