Normally I would say a bunch of sappy things but I think the best way to enjoy today is to remember her birth story...
It starts the day before I actually gave birth so here goes: I had walked that day FOREVER and also worked that night AND seen a movie! Haha. I walked to work and then after work walked back home and we went to see a movie. Exactly which one I can't recall completely but I know it was scary. Perhaps Blair Witch Project. Haha. Anywho, that night I got home around 10pm and remember thinking "wow that popcorn really hurt my stomach" oh to be young and naive! Either way around 11, after much cramping I realized they were contractions. At the time I still lived at home with my parents, yes I know I know, lecture lecture lecture about young parenting! Either way all I kept thinking was that I didn't want to wake my parents up in the middle of the night for no reason so instead I grabbed my mickey mouse watch and started timing my contractions. Around 530amthey were roughly 4-5 minutes apart and I should most defenitly have been taken to the hopsital but I was stubborn and my parents still weren't up. Yes I know, again, how naive was I!By the time my mom woke up it was 545am and the reason she woke was because she could hear me pacing my room breathing to keep the pain down. On the way to hospital I think I saw fear in my moms eyes as we drove to the Queen of the Valley in our breadbox Aerostar van. Aww yes, those were the days.
Once we got to the hospital the contractions literally STOPPED. The funnier part was that the day before my doctor (I had an appt at 8am) told me "I never say this when you aren't dilated to only a 3 or less (I was at a 2) but you are having this baby soon...you can count on it". Guess she was right. So there we are, me fully dressed and my mom looking frazzled and Carina well...she obviously got stage fright (never would guess from her bubbling personality these days). Nurse called the doctor, doctor didn't want to send me home so I stayed, they put me on pitocin, didn't feel a thing until 7pm that night (on the dot). I laid my head down JUST as Fresh Prince of Belair started (my fave show at the time) and at 8pm i lifted my head and they were in shock. I had just had an hour long contraction and still no pain meds. They put me up in the bed, I started pushing, eating ice and out she came a few pushes later and nearly into her grandmas arm. NO REALLY, the nurse said "first baby takes at least an hour to push" Yeah, not Carina she has always been an overachiever and out she came in record time and bigger than we imagined. haha. She was 8lbs 10 oz and only 20 inches long and BOY did she have a TON of hair.
She slept through the very first night and I knew she and I were going to be great together. Carina has always been amazing to me, she made being a mom easy (at least it USED to be easy) as she was so easy going and all about smiling and making people smile. She broke her first tooth at 4 months, she crawled at 6 and she said her first word at 7 months. On the night before her first birthday (I was BOUND AND DETERMINED to get her to walk before her first bday) she took her first step and from then on she didn't even do the normal step fall step, she just flat out walked (apparently she had been practicing long before she decided to show me). haha. At 1 and a half she was using 3-5 word sentences, at 2 she was fully potty trained (only had one little accident and oddly she was the one who instigated the whole "big girl underwear" transition, after all...her friends were all doing it..yes even then she had to be in the in crowd). At 3 she was a little fashion diva who had a vocabulary that amazed me and that is also when she got her first barbie. STINKING RC! I am totally anti barbie yet he insisted. At 4 she graduated preschool and new how to spell her first and last name and at 5 she was reading full books.
In no way am I bragging about how great of a mom I am to have had her reach these goals in fact, quite the opposite. She has always led her own life, made the decisions and just showed me how to help her along the way. At times I swear she was the teacher and I was the student, but I suppose that is how it goes when you have kids. We just soak it in and they teach us the lessons. Even when we think we are in control we are not.
Carina has amazed me at each milestone and although I look at her and think "wow" I also watch her and think "she is amazing". I love her with all I am and all that I may become and I must say....
Happy Birthday Baby Girl...you have come so far in just these short ten years, you are going to make great things happen in life. We love you so much!
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