Wiggles and Waves

Today was an exciting day.

The twins are 11 weeks gestation now, and we just got to have another ultrasound. Our babies are as big as limes!

Ever since our first ultrasound, one of the babies has always measured right on target, and the other one has always measured a week behind in terms of growth. I will refer to them as "Big" and "Little".

Big was SO wiggly during our ultrasound. Both babies now have fully developed (albeit small) arms and legs. Big was moving them like crazy!

Little was completely still. The heartbeat was good, but I got worried that something might be wrong. Everyone in the room (the ultrasound tech, Josh, and I) all sat there noiselessly as we willed and waited for Little to move for us.

All of the sudden, Little's arm raised up as high as it could go and the fingers started moving all around. Little was waving to us!

Needless to say, today was a good day. Every time we are able to get an ultrasound and see our little ones, I feel like I'm walking on air for the rest of the day. With how often I get told that this pregnancy is "high risk," I'm more paranoid than I would have normally been if I was just pregnant with one baby. Those ultrasounds are my favorite thing right now because I can see my babies and know that they're doing ok in there.

Stay safe, my little ones!

Bursting with Hope

Today was a very special day.

For a month now, I've been giving myself shots, taking all sorts of pills, having my blood drawn every other day, and having a dildo-like object shoved up my "nether regions" several times a week. Sounds fun, doesn't it?

In the course of this process, I acquired approximately 100 holes in my body, 15 bruises, 10 lbs of weight, and of course, about 25 freakouts / breakdowns / days when I just thought "I can't do this."

Today, however, marked a very important milestone. Josh and I got to watch on the monitor as two beautiful embryos were placed into my uterus. See those two white horizontal lines above the green pointer? That's them. They may not look like much now, but with a little hope, faith, and prayer, these little guys (or at least one of them!) could turn into a beautiful addition to our family nine months from now.

So I'm "thinking sticky thoughts" as the Doctor put it. I am thinking positively. I am clinging to the belief that this WILL work. My body IS fertile. It IS made to do this. I CAN do this. There is no room in my mind for doubt. The odds are in my favor: each of the two embryos placed inside me have a 32-35% chance of sticking, giving me about a 67% chance of pregnancy, according to the doctor. 

I will have the official results on December 27th. Until then, Velcro. Chewed gum. Honey. Glue. Syrup. Tape. This is me thinking sticky thoughts. Tree sap. S'mores. Oh, and semen. (Obligatory)

Chasing Ghosts

I guess it’s luck, but it’s the same
Hard luck, you’ve been trying to tame
Maybe it’s love, but it’s like you said,
“Love is like a role that we play.” 

But, I believe in you so much
I could die for the words that you say
But, I believe in you so much
I could die from the words that you say 

But you’re chasing the ghost of a good thing
Haunting yourself as the real thing
It’s getting away from you again
While you’re chasing ghosts.

Today my music tastes were reverted back to the way they were when I was in high school. Good ole' Dashboard Confessional. I think I remember now why I liked them. They're great to listen to when you just want to feel like someone--anyone--else understands the crap you're going through. This song has always been one of my favorites written by Dashboard. Today it applies to a situation in my own life. Here is my own interpretation of this song today.

1. You're chasing the ghost of a good thing

2. Haunting yourself as the real thing

3. It’s getting away from you again

4. While you’re chasing ghosts. 

1. You're chasing something that you used to think made you happy--holding onto your addictions instead of just letting them go.

2. Trying to convince yourself that this happiness you're forging is real.

3. The ones you love the most are slipping away from you again

4. While you're choosing addiction and lies instead.

But, I believe in you so much, I could die from the words that you say 

 I trusted you to such a degree, that when you lied, it such was a crushing blow--to me, to us, and to our entire foundation.

--It's getting away from you again. While you're chasing ghosts.--

Cruisin: My First Carnival Cruise Experience

AKA: The Longest Blog Post Ever Written

I have never been on a cruise before, though I've been dying to for a very long time. Finally, after posting on Facebook "who wants to go with me on a cruise?" (not really expecting any serious responses) Emily texted me and said she wanted to go! (This is me and Emily:)

So in early July we booked our 4 day cruise to Mexico to depart on July 23rd. This vacation was going to be epic.

Day 1:

My flight into Long Beach airport is a short and uneventful one (I suppose all flights seem short to me now in comparison to the 20 hour journey into Cambodia. I even get a nap on the plane - which was good, because I'd only slept an hour the night before my flight.

At one point we were in the air above these puffy clouds and it just looked so tangible, like cotton candy or snow. Here is a picture:

The plane lands and I was one of the first to get off (it pays to be in the front of the plane). The first thing I noticed is that long beach airport is GHET-TO!!  There aren't even any terminals - we just get off the plane via an outdoor ramp and follow the crowd to the baggage claim area. The baggage area is also outdoors, with just a tarp covering the area.

Just as my plane lands, I turn my phone off airplane mode and get a text from Emily.



Two hours...ok. I reply:



I think when I'd said I'd take a "stroll," Emily and Melody (Melody is our transportation) thought I would just walk around the airport. But I couldn't do that. I am too excited to be here! As soon as my luggage comes off the carousel, I follow the airport's Exit signs and begin wheeling my bag along the sidewalk away from the airport. I have no idea how close or far the beach is. I use the compass app on my phone to find out which direction is west and begin heading that direction. Soon, however, I run into a tunnel. I think, "if they didn't want people walking here, they wouldn't have built a sidewalk, right?" It seemed like sound logic at the time. I head into the tunnel, my skirt flying every direction with every passing car. Lots of cars are honking and it's loud and scary. I'm sure I look like an idiot, wandering blindly into this tunnel for cars. It turns out that the tunnel leads into a series of on-ramps for freeways. The sidewalk ends just as the tunnel does. I am forced to turn around and endure another humiliating walk along the sidewalk of the tunnel, all the while still wheeling my luggage behind me.

I escape the tunnel and am back where I started. West hadn't panned out for me. South would have led me into another tunnel, and I am DONE with tunnels. My only option (aside from going back to the airport) is to head East. I ask Siri on my iPhone for the nearest place to eat and she faithfully finds me 10 places to eat in a one mile radius. The nearest one is just around the corner. I order a milkshake and find a place to sit and wait for Emily to come. Fortunately I don't have to wait long. Ten minutes later Emily and Melody are pulling up and I am stuffing my belongings into the back of her station wagon. By this time, it's about 9 am. Our ship doesn't leave until 5:30 pm. Needless to say, there is a lot of time to kill.

So what do three girls do with hours of free time on our hands? We shop, of course. Target for some hygienic necessities we had forgotten to pack. Payless for some gym shoes (which we'd also both forgotten to pack). Walmart for socks and some Advil--which would prove to be a lifesaver on this trip for me. A set of shops by the dock where we could eat and look around and basically just kill as much time as possible. We enter a hat store with some of the CUTEST hats I have ever seen. Emily tries on a large rimmed hat whose rim is extremely wide and I think it is adorable. Just as I'm telling her this, a skinny, well dressed woman in a striped French-looking shirt who looks like she'd look good in anything casually walks by and says, "Uh, no. Too big." Like she was the official Fashion Police. So Emily puts it back. I still maintain the opinion that it was cute and not too big.

Ok finally the time has arrived. We are allowed to board as early as 12:30. We give our luggage to the concierge, then wait in a bunch of lines to get on the ship. The wait is excruciating. I will explain why.

On Sunday, July 15th, I guess I bit my lip pretty hard by accident. By Wednesday, July 18th, it looked like this:

By Thursday it had gotten all discolored and looked like this:

I thought it couldn't possibly get any worse than this. It can only get better from here, right? Wrong. Here is what it looks like on Day One of the cruise, 8 days after the initial "injury":

Yeah. It's pretty bad. As bad as it looks, it hurts even worse. I can think of nothing else but the blinding, searing, white-hot pain I'm experiencing when it's hurting. Trust me, I'm not being a baby. There are a lot of nerve endings in lips. Their capacity to give the body pleasure matches their capacity for pain. So I can't exactly smile or even talk like a normal person. The goal is to not move my mouth too much, for fear of reopening the wound. One thing that soothes the pain, at least for a little while, is Neosporin. Because I'm SO intelligent, I'd packed my Neosporin in my big suitcase, which was now with the concierge and nowhere to be found. It wouldn't arrive in the room for at least a few hours. So we wait in the lines. They take my picture for my ID card (and yes, I look SUPER happy in my ID pic). Finally when we board the ship, we journey all the way to the bottom deck of the ship to the Medical Center, which is closed (because apparently emergencies only happen while the ship is in motion). Because we have no way of obtaining any pain killers or Neosporin before my bag arrives, we just head to the room and lay down. I don't really remember anything for the next three hours. It ends up being a very long nap. I'd been pretty tired (again, I had gotten just an hour of sleep), and in a lot of pain, which only sleep could cure. Finally thirty minutes after I wake up, my bag arrives in the room so I could take a painkiller and put on some Neosporin. Hallelujah.

We decide to look around and explore what would be our home away from home for the next four days. There are some fancy dining halls, a giant outdoor area with a big pool and two hot tubs, with music always playing, a casino, several buffets, a big stage for game shows at nights, a spa with a steam room and a sauna, and a gym. We decide to try out the gym. It is on the very top floor (Deck 12) at the very front of the ship. Here is the view from the treadmill:

Pretty amazing. Tomorrow is Catalina island. We're excited. Goodnight. 


This is the towel animal that came with our Turn Down Service tonight. We're not sure what animal it's supposed to be. Maybe our housekeeper is new and doesn't know how to make cool looking towel animals.

Day 2:

Never in my life have I had breakfast in bed. Here, we get two of our breakfasts delivered to our room. Today, we each order cereal, a croissant, two bagels, chocolate milk, and some yogurt.  We specify we want it to arrive between 6:30 and 6:45. It arrives at 6:39. The service here is amazing.

7:30 am - The ship is docked off the coast of Catalina island. We have to get in a smaller boat to be taken to shore. Here is a panorama I did of the island:

Also, here is our awesome ship. Isn't it beautiful? Our room is toward the back of the ship, just above the red line.

We get off the boat that has taken us to shore, and begin to wander. We find this awesome cave. When you find a cave, you can't just look at it and move on. You must go in and explore. So we did. It wasn't much to behold. Just a lot of Kim + Joe = ❤, and a lot of crude drawings of male genitalia.  Here we are in the cave.

Because of my lip injury, I can't really smile all that big....and it's painful to laugh. This is my face every time something makes me laugh:

Catalina island has so many things to choose from to do. Kayaking, peddle boats, snorkeling, scuba diving, bike rentals, helicopter rides, parasailing, jet ski rentals, etc. We're on a budget, so we choose to do just one excursion: Parasailing.

It's terrifying. It's exhilarating. It's amazing. It feels as though at any time you could plummet to your death in the blue abyss of the ocean. At the same time you feel like you're flying, and it is the best feeling in the world. 

This is me while we are in the air. I was FREAKING OUT.

We -- ok, not we -- I had told the boat captain that I wanted him to make it so we could dip our toes in the water, because he gave that to us as one of the options. I hadn't thought of the logistics of this. This would mean that after being up 600 feet in the air, with plummeting into the vast depths of the ocean being at the top of the list of things to be afraid of, we would be lowered down just above the water. One wrong move on our part seemed like it could cause us to go all the way under. So here we are. 600 feet in the air. Now 500. Now 400. I realize what they're doing. They are preparing to lower us down so we can touch the water. We start yelling at the top of our lungs: "WE CHANGED OUR MINDS! WE CHANGED OUR MIIIIIIINDS!!!!!" but they just keep lowering us further down. Finally, we are just above the surface of the water.  We lift our feet so we don't touch the water. They lower us down some more (wtf, captain?). We lift our feet higher. Finally, they lower us down so much that our entire lower halves of our bodies are submerged for a split second under the water. Hitting the water sends Emily spinning in her harness. She and I are both SOAKED, her more so than me.

They lift us back up into the air for another minute or two, then they reel is back into the boat.

This is probably one of the coolest things I've ever done.

We're soaked to the bone so we decide to find the boat that will take us to our ship. It's only 11 am, but we're done with the island for the day. We might have gone back, except there is a massive line of people waiting to get off the ship. Not worth it, we both agree.

We sunbathe on the "21 and Over" deck (it's nice not to have children running all over the place around us). After some time, we decide to come back to our room. Just as we arrive at the room, Emily makes the excuse that she "needs to get something". I stay in the room and she leaves in a hurry. When she comes back, she is laughing hysterically. She tells me that she has just invited two brothers (some guys that were on the 21 and Over deck while we had been there) to come hang out with us and that she told them our room number! Less than an hour later, the phone rings. Emily answers it. It's Kyle and Hamilton, the guys she so boldly invited to our room earlier. They have invited us to join them with their parents at a martini tasting event the cruise was hosting. So we go and meet them. Their parents, Mina and Randy, are hilarious. Randy was already pretty drunk and kept blurting embarrassing things in a loud voice like "...And that's how I got herpes!".

Hamilton and Kyle are nice enough at first. Hamilton has a girlfriend back home, and just wants to make friends his age on this cruise. Kyle is single but painfully shy and doesn't seem to quite have enough self confidence or esteem to carry on a normal conversation in a group setting. Emily and Kyle pair off and disappear. I have no idea where she's gone, and she has my room key (we find out later on that they've gone to a comedy show together). This leaves me with Hamilton, and Carter - Carter is their 20 year old brother.  We hang out until its time for dinner.


Here's Emily and I with Carter and Hamilton:

It's formal night. Oh how I LOVE this night! Everyone is dressed to the nines, in evening gowns and tuxedos. Since I can't find Emily, I dine in the formal dining hall with Hamilton and Carter's family. The food is to die for. Its a three course meal with an appetizer, main course, then dessert. There is so much food to choose from. I order a tri-tip steak, and for dessert a warm chocolate melting cake with vanilla ice cream. Best meal I've had in a long time.

I go back to the room to find Emily. We decide to all go see the 11 o'clock comedy show. The comedian is pretty funny, but the funniest part of the show is the squawky laugh of the lady (or man?) behind us. After the show, I head off to my room for bed, while Emily stays to chat with the boys.


Here is tonights towel animal (an ELEPHANT!!!):

Day 3: Ensenada Mexico

My first thought when I wake up this morning: Why is this a tourist destination? This place is a dump.

I had always pictured Mexico to look like this. Then people would try to change that mental picture by throwing out words to me like "white sandy beaches" and "crystal clear blue water". Nope. All I see outside my cabin window are some freight liners, construction cranes, giant piles of garbage, and a flat plane of hot nothingness as far as the eye can see. (can't we just go back to Catalina??)

7 am - Emily is still asleep. I have a hard time sleeping in (since I'm so used to getting up early for work) so I get up and head to the gym. The view outside the treadmill window is bleak compared to the one before, when it was nothing but the rolling blue ocean.

When I'm finished with the gym, I go back to the room. Breakfast has arrived already. We eat and then get ready for the day. We step onto land around 10 am, this time not needing a boat to take us to shore. There are buses ready and waiting for us, to take us into town. Emily and I don't really have a set plan for the day. We've decided to wing it. On the bus, the very friendly tour guide gives us all a flyer and tells us about a $15 tour we could go on that would take us to La Bufadora (the blow hole) and the flea market. We don't really know what else to do, so we say OK. It's an hour bus ride up to La Bufadora, which is in the same vicinity as the flea market. Here is La Bufadora:

Here is the view near La Bufadora: 

The flea market is a mad house. The shop owners are sharks. Everywhere we look there is a shop owner calling out to us. "Ladies!" "Señoritas!" "You try a sample of my churros?" and "Come in! For you only, 30% off!" although that "30% off" phrase is just to draw you into the store. The store's prices don't actually matter. I got 77% off one of my souvenirs by haggling. All you have to do is tell them the highest you're willing to go and then when they say "no", start walking out of the store--but you have to be serious about walking out of the store empty handed. I got an adorable pink bag the same way...that, and because I spoke Spanish with the salesman and because he thought I was "muy bonita" (his words).

When we've gotten all we'd come for, we stopped in at the Habana Banana for lunch. They have a tiny monkey!

And a snake!

All in all, it was a successful day of shopping. Boarding the bus to go back to the ship, we are exhausted. 

We board the ship again, then we go to lay out and fall asleep in the sun for an hour and a half. This white girl somehow did not get a sunburn. I wish I could say the same for Emily.

Dinner in the dining hall again doesn't disappoint. Even though it isn't formal night, we get dressed all fancy because it's fun to "turn heads". Here is me in my formalwear: 

After dinner we visit the hot tub to try and be social. There aren't many singles on this ship to hang out with. So we don't stay long. We go see a game show involving members of the audience placing a large gold coin in between their butt cheeks (over the clothes of course), walking it over to a plastic cup on the ground, and dropping it in. It is one of the most awkward things I have ever witnessed.

The boat departs from Mexico at 9:30 pm. When we start moving, we make our way to the front of the boat. The moon is straight ahead of us. The view is exquisite although it is much too dark to get a decent photo. I had to put it on a 2 second exposure, so its blurry because the boat is moving.

I don't remember much after that. I think that's when I went to bed.

Day 4:

No breakfast in bed today. Instead, we eat breakfast at the fancy dining hall that we'd had dinner at the night before. We make plans to go lay out, but it's cloudy and pretty cold today. So we wait.

I finally get to watch We Bought a Zoo on TV - a movie that admittedly I've wanted to see for a while. Its a cute one. I liked it a lot. I guess I can sort of relate somewhat with the kids in that movie whose dad has a bit of a midlife crisis after his wife (their mom) passes away.

It's like 1 pm before we decide to leave the cabin. We lay out until it gets too windy...about 2 hours. It is beautiful outside. As far as the eye can see, there is nothing but ocean. The clouds have all disappeared. We eat lunch -- for me, cheese fries and pizza (diet? what diet?)-- then I go back to the room for a nap. Today is the last day of the cruise and I am exhausted. An hour into my nap, Emily wakes me up and Hamilton and Carter are standing above me in the room, just waiting for me to wake up. We head outside to Lido deck for some sunshine and cold beverages. Emily is really, really sunburned. We get in the hot tub and stay there until the sun sets. The sunset is beautiful. 

Panoramas are fun.

Dinner again at the Mardi Gras dining hall (the fancy one we keep eating at), then it's time to go to the room to pack. Our fabulous vacation is just about over. Last event of the cruise is a comedy show at 11 pm. It's a good way to end the vacation.

I can't wait to get back to shore so I can use my phone and the Internet again. I miss the Internet. I miss Facebook. Most of all, I miss Google. I never realized how much I Google things mid-conversation to show someone something or to prove a point, or to look up a word. There are other things I miss too, that I can't wait to see when I get back, that I've been thinking about during this entire trip....but now I've said too much. :)

It's 12:30 am, and I am falling asleep while writing this. Goodnight.

Day 5:

I am on the plane ride home. There is turbulence. Here is my view. 

Feeling a little sick - they're telling me to put away the laptop - k - bye!

The Girl who Brought Me Back to Life

Makela, you saved my life. You gave me purpose. You gave my life meaning. But most of all, you healed me from a pain and downward spiral of misery that up until the day you were born had been inescapable.

From the time I was young, I've been attracted to the tragic. Why IS that? Well, I have my theories. First, I need to digress a bit.

The best songs and movies to me are the saddest ones. The ones where a loved one dies at the end. Or the ones in which the protagonist suffers a loss of some kind. Some examples are:

Music:

Here Comes Goodbye - Rascal Flatts
The Freshman - The Verve Pipe
All We Ever Do is Say Goodbye - John Mayer
Bulletproof Weeks - Matt Nathanson
Expensive Love - Gavin Castleton

Movies:

What Dreams May Come
Life is Beautiful
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Notebook
Shutter Island (a thriller by genre, but also an intensely sad love story)

Loss. Perhaps it is this aspect of these things that attracts me so much to them. Loss is something with which I can relate. It is something that evokes emotion, and therefore helps in a way for me to deal with some of my past.

Sometimes, in my moments of weakness and self-pity, I admittedly allow myself to feel cheated. Out of having a Mom to help raise me and to be there for me when I needed a stable and constant female influence. Out of having a normal childhood which didn't involve living in Motel 6 or dropping out of school and selling or giving up literally everything we owned to start a "family band". I feel cheated out of having a dad during my adolescent years - one who could be there for us, to meet our needs physically and emotionally.

...But I digress.

It is tragedy and loss that shaped me as a young and impressionable child. In fact, I came to expect it. It wasn't necessarily that I was a pessimist. I just had grown so accustomed to people leaving or dying, that I had no reason to expect anything different. After Mom passed, my dad began to date. A lot. In his defense, Mom had specifically asked him to find a new mom for us, as her dying wish (I couldn't imagine even being half as selfless as she was). Every time he brought another lady home, the impression we got was, "Meet your future mom!" so at first, I allowed myself to get attached much too easily. I craved that motherly influence, and my dad was always much less strict and easier to get along with when he had a woman influencing his decisions (example: for the longest time I was not allowed to wear nail polish to church, but after a girlfriend of his told him she always wore nail polish to church, it became okay from then on). But shortly after I would allow myself to get attached, she would inexplicably be out of the picture and a new woman would come along. This happened more times than I care to recount. After a while, I treated each one that came along exactly the same--I was a BRAT. I was rude. I was callous.  No one could break down the walls I'd built to keep them all out. I figured that my attitude would scare anyone away who wasn't completely serious about my dad.

Then Tiffany came along and began dating my dad. My experience with her taught me more than my experiences with all the other girlfriends prior to her. She and my dad got serious. Then they got engaged. And then they were married.  I then opened myself up to her and let her into my life. She was nice, she was beautiful, and I looked up to her. I allowed myself to get emotionally close to her because I thought, "They're married now. This one isn't going to leave like everyone else has." I'd never even considered the possibility of divorce. When it ended abruptly and without warning less than six months later, I didn't know what to feel. I'd been tricked. Betrayed. I had allowed myself to get close to someone, and she deserted us just like everyone else had. After she moved out, I never saw or heard from her again. I came to the realization that she had never really cared about us at all.

So why trust anyone at all? I thought. Everyone in my life will just leave at some point or another. Every time a good thing happened, it seemed to be followed by some horrible loss--and I just couldn't take another one of those.

So when my dad got back into the dating game again, I had had enough. I refused to even meet any of the women he brought home. Then Suzanne came along. I was distant, to say the least. When they planned an ice cream outing so that my brothers and I could meet her and her kids, I refused to attend.

But again things got serious and the two of them ended up getting married. But I wasn't fooled. I was once bitten, twice shy. I now knew that not even marriage was enough to keep someone in my life. I could only expect the worst, based on the past I'd experienced.

Then something happened that none of us had expected. In May of 2003, we found out that there would be a tiny new addition to the family, come December. Suzanne was expecting a baby. Although I wanted to be excited, I just couldn't allow myself to be. I couldn't take another disappointment, another loss. If I'd allowed myself to be excited, and something were to go wrong, I just knew that I wouldn't be able to handle it. I figured out that if I expected the worst, I could never be disappointed (again, I realize as I say these things that it all sounds incredibly pessimistic. But I think it was the only way I knew how to protect myself from getting hurt again). As horrible as it sounds, I convinced myself in those early days of Suzanne's pregnancy that she would miscarry. I didn't want her to miscarry. I just "knew" it would happen. Months passed and this little miracle of ours just got bigger in Suzanne's tummy. Ultrasounds showed it was a girl (!) and she was perfectly healthy (I am now getting all teary-eyed as I write this). With some trepidation, I allowed myself to get excited when i distinctly felt something move as I put my hand on Suzanne's eight-month pregnant belly. When I began spending hours and hours of my day looking for baby name ideas to suggest to my parents, my subconscious admonished me, reminding me not to get my hopes up too much, as things could still go wrong.

December 7th, 2003. Suzanne's water broke early that morning. The day had finally arrived when we would finally get to meet this new, sweet addition to our family. Suzanne asked me if I wanted to be in the room during the delivery. I hesitated, wondering if that would be awkward or weird, but my curiosity got the better of me. And it made me feel important that she wanted me there.

By this point, my inner-ten-foot-cement-walls had already begun to crumble, but only slightly. I was beginning to allow myself to have hope, if nothing else, that everything would be okay.

The labor took a long time. We were at the hospital all day. It wasn't until late that evening that the baby was ready to come out. When she started to crown I began to cry, marveling at the miracle I was witnessing. I was watching a human life come into existence that previously wasn't there. I also realized in that moment that things just might turn out okay for once. Of course, in the back of my mind was always a jumble of all of the common ways that infants can die unexpectedly, such as SIDS (always expecting the worst possible outcome).

The moment she was born, she became my everything. She was my Makela, my KayleeBug, the sister I had always wanted but had never had until that point.

When she was a year old, I could finally accept that this little one was sticking around. She wasn't as "breakable" as she'd seemed before. I wasn't worried anymore about her suddenly being taken from this earth without warning by some scary infant cause of death. Because of her, I could finally heal and trust that sometimes good things can and do happen without being taken away. And I thank God every day for bringing her into my life.

She doesn't know it, but Makela's birth and life has saved me. Simply her existence kept me grounded during the times I wanted to fall apart. She is the reason I didn't keep driving as far south as Highway 101 would take me when I wanted to run away from my life in California, change my name, and never come back (a story for another time). She makes me want to be a better person, because of the example I know I have to set for her. If it weren't for her, I know I wouldn't be who or what I am today. I would have moved far, far away and stayed there forever. I would have grown up to be a bitter, miserable person always expecting the worst--because I never would have learned any other outcome. 

Makela: you gave me the gift of hope. Hope in the future. Hope that there are more good things yet to come.

Makela all packed up for our sleepover :)