For the Love of Ivey

At 5:30 am on 4/25 our Ivey will be 5 years old. A milestone. So tonight I kissed her goodnight for the last time as a 4 year old. 5 seems so much older. And it is. And I am sure that tomorrow night there will be much to write about - we'll celebrate in true Ivey style. Tonight instead of rehashing the 4th year, I think I'll wait and enjoy the excitment of the promise of her 5th year. In this moment I am in awe of my girl and all of her accomplishments. There are so many. Nevertheless, her birth day comes with many emotions. Many are our personal accomplishments and somehow surviving these 5 years with her and we know that we can face a challenge and keep on going. Sometimes we have felt broken, but we are always mended with something extra in the new weave. I don't think that will ever change. Her birth nitched a literal mark in our lives, a "before life" and a "life after". Now days it is almost impossible to remember life without...

Another birthday approaches. But it is not just a birthday, for our entire family it is an anniversary, the anniversary of new life. For the first time I have realized how coincidental it is that her birthday lands right in the middle of spring. It’s the perfect time for beginnings. This past week we had her annual IEP for school. Without a doubt it is a miracle in itself that she is attending school. She made it there. But what strikes me hard is how perfectly things have worked out. My girl maybe the luckiest girl in the state of Georgia. Many would find that hard to imagine between the four injections of an antibiotic that stings like crazy in this past week, the IVig infusion today and the two CT scans planned for tomorrow, but really that is a sidebar for her. Still she has a lucky streak. The powers that be have decided that this girl of mine will be blessed. The people in place in her school are amazing. Our school experience, her school experience, is unlike mos...