It Hasn't Really Been a Decade?

Isabella Anne digging for crystals

A decade? Really, that can't be. My baby turns ten today, and I feel a tad reflective (and somewhat sad), but am so very proud of my family and where we have come in that blink of an eye decade.

It had been a terrible year, we had just lost both of Tom's parents. Wolf, Tom's Dad, had died of lung cancer in October, after a year long struggle. And then in March we lost Anne to a liver cancer that happened so quickly (45 days), we hardly knew what hit us. It was really quite odd, the two of them had each been married to someone else for over twenty years, so it wasn't the old love story; literally dying of a broken heart, just horrific timing on the parts of their children and the rest of the family.

Anne was one of my most beloved friends, I had been blessed in the mother in law department. We frequently had lunch and she was always a huge help with the boys. They always had such a great time with "Nanny", she was quite adventurous and took the boys to so many cool places. Thankfully, Thomas, my oldest, still remembers those times and holds them close to his heart. So, the loss hit us all very hard.

A couple of weeks after Anne's funeral I was very sick. I kept insisting to Tom that it was just grief, and just to give my body time to recover. That was until I got the bed spins so badly in the middle of the night that I threw up! Tom insisted I go to the doctor, and I have never been so shocked to hear the news, I was pregnant. The funny thing was that before Wolf had gotten sick, we had tried and tried to get pregnant, but with his parents dying, we were not comfortable getting pregnant at that time, so we figured we would wait until the time was right.

From that moment on, I knew I was going to have a girl. Not only because my pregnancy was so different than it had been with the boys, but I knew that this girl was a gift for a family that had been struggling to see the positive in life for quite some time. Through our fog of mourning, the entire family slowly started learning about the circle of life. The joy that Isabella Anne has brought to this family is hard to describe, it is almost as though she is literally a part of Nanny, but with her very own distinct flavor of girly self.

Tom and I had been struggling with names, we knew it was partially Anne, but nothing seemed to fit right. Two nights before our girl was born, I was at aquacize, when I literally heard (in my mind) the name Isabella Anne. The look on Tom's face when I came home and said that her name had to be Isabella was unforgettable. Remember, this is ten years ago, the name was not at all popular yet, so I had a fight on my hands convincing him. The minute he set eyes on her, he knew that I had been right, there couldn't be a more perfect name for our little queen.

Have a miracle of a day!