Amaging Moment

Happy Tuesday! Happy Valentine’s Day!
And happy Listable Life day!
Today’s topic required almost an entire week of soul-searching for me:
What are 5 moments that you would live over again?
Like I said…it’s a big one.
A few of my moments are a little lengthy because, well, that is what makes them so incredible. So take a look & then leave a moment {or five!} that YOU would live all over again. I can’t wait to hear what you pick!

1. The first date.
Er…we might need to apply the word “date” a little loosely here.
A few days after the Hubs & I met for the first time, he called my dorm room to ask if I’d like to take a walk together.
Sure, I replied, I love to walk! Brilliant, I know.
He said great; he’d pick me up at 9:30. As in 9:30 at night. Which these days is very close to the time we go to bed {him to sleep, me to blog}. But I digress.
We walked and we walked and we walked. We strolled through campus, we walked through the adjacent neighborhoods and talked about anything and everything.
Somehow,we ended up in front of the closed gates to a sprawling cemetery near campus.
Let me be clear: I’m not a huge cemetery fan. I saw the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie at a sleepover and I’m not sure I ever fully recovered.
But somehow, I found myself hopping over the fence and standing on the other side of that heavy gate.
I remember taking a deep breath. It was really dark. And really creepy.
But before I could form my next thought, the Hubs landed next to me. And just like that, his fingers intertwined in mine. And I felt instantly calm. And almost giddy with happiness.
We were holding hands!
Remember that heart-pounding, I-hope-my-hands-aren’t-sweating-because-I’m-so-excited, is-this-really-happening feeling?
When you are trying to act calm & cool but your head is actually buzzing with euphoria?
That moment~ I’d go back to that moment in the cemetery, holding hands with the boy wearing a baseball cap who became my husband, my best friend and the father of my children.

2 & 3. My first kiss to each brand-new daughter. 
Both of our little girls arrived via c-section~ Little O thanks to her stubborn refusal to abandon her frank breech position, and Baby H because my doctor felt it was the safest route, given that the girls are 20 months apart.
That beautiful moment where each newborn daughter was held up over the curtain will forever be emblazoned into my memory. After all, how can you forgot finally meeting the face that you’ve loved and protected those past 9 months? That you’ve dreamed about your whole life? The word “love” doesn’t even touch it. I was so consumed with relief, gratitude, and absolute adoration for my child…not to mention an overwhelming sense of love for my husband.
We did this. With God’s help, we created a beautiful, precious baby girl. Twice.
I’m sure I kissed each child as soon as the nurses had swaddled her up and brought her over to us. I couldn’t hold the girls right away since I was still in surgery, but I could at least hold my face close, breathed in their brand-new smell, and drink in their perfectness. So close to God in that moment~ all of us.
*~*~*~*~*
Little O was placed in my arms on May 19th, 2009. She was quiet and alert; her eyes were wide and she was looking at me sweetly. Our observer child~ nothing gets past her, even to this day. 
She was swaddled tightly and there was only a few inches of her face showing before her hat began.
I snuggled her up to me, closed my eyes and breathed her in. And gently placed my lips on her cheek. Her forehead. Her cheek again.
She was here. And she was ours.
*~*~*~*~*
Baby H arrived on January 22nd, 2011. In typical Baby H fashion, once she was given the once-over by the nurses, wrapped up and handed to the Hubs, she started wailing. She was a mover & a shaker even when she was minutes old.
She was hungry. Time to get the show on the road, momma. You need to feed me.
When she was finally placed in my arms, she was still wailing. It didn’t matter. She was gorgeous, red-faced and indignant over having to wait for her first meal. 

I bent down to touch her cheek, to calm her. And to give that sweet spunky daughter of ours her first of so many, many kisses.
“You’re home,” I whispered into her soft hair. “And I love you.”
4. The desire to write.
I’ve always known that I wanted to be a writer, so I can’t exactly say which moment was the IT moment for me. My mom has always said that I followed her around the house when I was in second and third grade, asking her how to spell words for my stories. I’d sit in my big closet and write and write in my notebook. I loved it, even when I barely knew what writing was all about. I just knew I needed to do it.
Then came AP English, the first “real” test of my writing abilities. That feeling of satisfaction when I aced a big paper was intense. It was encouraging. It was real.
And then in college, when my friend Annie and I stuck it out through the hardest writing class I’ve ever had to take. Two-thirds of our class dropped it; we hung in there. And we rocked it. I still look back on getting an “A” in that class as a huge writing accomplishment.
Those moments all gave me the courage to make the leap of faith to start this blog and put my writing out there for the world to see. For the world to read. And hopefully for a few lovely people to connect with it, enjoy it and be inspired by it.
5. Family of Four.
The moment I realized we were a family of 4~ amazing. Strangely, it wasn’t this moment, our first official photo as a family of 4: 

It was a few weeks later, after the chaos had settled down and we had semi-adjusted to life with a toddler and a newborn. It was one of our first solo days at home after our supportive family had left~ just the four of us plus our sweet puppy dog.
We were playing with the girls late in the afternoon~ in fact, I was holding both of them~ when the Hubs caught my eye. And smiled a really, really big smile. All of the exhaustion melted off of his face.
This is good, his eyes said.
Yes, I smiled back. Yes it is. 


So very, very good.
*~*~*~*~*
And so, friends, those are my five moments that I’d relive if I could. Share one moment or all five in the comments section~ I can’t wait to see what you choose!
And…if you missed any of my other Listable Life posts, you can check them out here: