I Have a Four Year Old?

Arden is four years old today. FOUR. Years. Old. It has been four years since the day she was born. I keep telling myself these things, but they still don't seem real. I don't have a four year old!! I have a little baby girl who looks like this:

But no, it has really been four whole years since the night she was born. I remember that night so well. It was three weeks before the due date, and I remember getting the phone call that Arden was going to be born that very night. It didn't seem real to me. As Preston and I drove to the hospital around 10:00 p.m., I remember feeling so excited and terrified and happy and worried all at the same time. I remember waiting all night in a freezing cold waiting room, watching Conan O'Brien and sitcom rerun after sitcom rerun. I kept getting cramps in my feet because it was so cold and because I was so nervous. I tried to sleep but got NOWHERE close. Preston snored on the ground. Finally around 4:30 a.m. the nurse came and got me and I followed her into the room where Arden was going to be born. I remember feeling like I was in a fuzzy dream. I remember one of the nurses pointing at a wrinkly purple thing and telling me, "there's her head." I thought the nurse must have been crazy because I didn't see anything that looked remotely like a head. But soon the wrinkly purple thing did turn out to be a head, and it was attached to a wrinkly purple baby! The baby quickly turned pink as she screamed a loud and beautiful scream.

Arden was 5 pounds and 13 ounces of heaven, born at 4:57 a.m. on March 2, 2006. After the nurses wrapped her up, they handed her to me. I looked into her eyes and tried to think of something profound to say, but I think I mumbled something like "Hi" instead. The next day we brought her home from the hospital. Even though we had a ton of baby stuff and I had read baby book after baby book, I remember that feeling of sitting on the couch and looking at this tiny little stranger and thinking: "I have no idea what I am doing!"

But, somehow, we made it through those first few sleepless days and nights and that teeny little peanut has turned into this:

I love this little girl so much. I am so thankful to be her mother. Before she came along I thought I knew a thing or two about love, about hard work, and about how much sleep I needed to function. I know now that I didn't know anything about any of that. Arden came along and completely changed my life, and I am grateful every day to have her. She has made me a better person. I feel so incredibly blessed that her birth mom chose us to be her family.

Happy Birthday, my sweet baby girl!