Mirabella Photography: the first year

isn't it silly to think of a first birthday party as the end of something? that seems, like, really wrong. yet that's how it's playing out in my head.

this past year went by SO faaaaast. someone said at ava's birthday party that they still felt like we were hanging out at the hospital for 22 or 23 hours, waiting on her TO HURRY UP AND GET HERE!!

that one day and night seemed to take forever. all of us in the waiting room, taking turns going back to check on josh and danielle, the smokers sneaking outside to smoke, the trips across the parking lot in the cold night to chili's for coffee and dessert and then more coffee, the people who had to go home and those of us that stayed, waiting patiently, wandering around a hospital that was a little like a ghost town at night, taking catnaps in the dark lobby, and then around 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, still waiting but less patiently, feeling very excited and very tired at the same time. the cell phone calls from the delivery suite to the waiting room... and then FINALLY....

she was mad!

all of that seems like it happened yesterday. maybe because it was such a momentous day, maybe because we were there for so long or because we were all so damn happy when she finally arrived, healthy and pink, and everythingandeveryoneisfineandwhew!whatarelief!!, but every detail of that night remains razor sharp in my memory, as if it will never fade.

it seems almost impossible that we've gone through a whole cycle of seasons and holidays, but ava is walking proof that it's true. she's taken her picture with the easter bunny, watched her first fireworks, watched daddy carve a pumpkin, looked at the pretty lights on the christmas tree and i'm sure her mommy whispered happy new year in her ear.

so, her first year has come and gone in a blur and, in some way, it does feel like an end or maybe just a completion. she's done with being a baby, and now she's a toddler and pretty soon she'll be a first grader and then a teenager and god, i hope all the years don't go by as quickly as the first one did!