Late on a springtime Saturday night, Baby Dawes came into this world.
She wasn’t due for another couple of weeks, but she and I both knew she was quickly running out of room in there. My baby shower had been just a month before, and even then I was busting at the seams.
But the day before our Little Miss was born had rolled around like any other Friday. I attended a Zoom meeting that morning for work, and at lunchtime, Sean went to the YMCA. I was waddling around the house and probably thinking about a quick nap when suddenly, water.
I knew Sean would miss the cell phone call if he was in the middle of a basketball game, so I called the front desk of the YMCA. Funnily enough, this was actually part of our birth plan if I did go into labor while Sean was playing his noon-ball games.
So when I called and said, “Hi, my husband is in the gym playing basketball and I think my water just broke — could you please tell him to come home?” the young woman who answered the phone very excitedly yelled “Oh my god!” and went and got Sean.
36 dramatic hours later, our girl was earth-side.
Since then (nearly 2 years!), we’ve been a happy party of 3. And it has been a party.
She makes us laugh every single day, multiple times a day, and we’re constantly amazed by her cleverness and wit. Life is nothing like I imagined it would be with a newborn >> baby >> toddler, but I guess that’s part of the magic.
Speaking of magic, I had a dream about Baby Dawes before she was born. It was after we’d learned we were expecting her, but before I was in the grips of morning sickness.
In my dream it was a crisp autumn morning, and I was sitting in a big and enveloping, round outdoor chair. I was surrounded by fluffy pillows and wrapped in a thick blanket, with a baby girl sitting on my lap wrapped up in the blanket with me.
I could only see over the top of her head, and I felt her whispy golden curls on my face. When I woke up, I was intrigued by her light, golden hair, since Sean and I both have dark brown hair and expected our child to have the same. But I vividly remembered the beautiful colors. I thought I could still feel the weight of her little body and maybe even the fresh scent of her hair.
It was the sweetest, most heart-warming dream I’ve ever had, and I cherished it through pregnancy and ever since.
So imagine my surprise when our daughter did in fact grow a head-full of bouncy blonde curls. (And if you see me in the salon getting highlights in my hair to match her’s — no you didn’t…)
I love when her tiny sticky hand comes to find mine and she leads me to her room, high-stepping as fast as she can the whole way like an excited prancing pony. We get her little ballet slippers on her feet — it’s nearly impossible to know which is left and which is right — and I pull up our Dawsey Jams playlist on Spotify.
The ensuing pitter patter of her leather shoes on the hardwood floor is delicious to my ears. She does her high-knees moves in a giggly circle and it’s just the cutest thing ever.
Then, it’s especially funny when she hears a song from her playlist in the wild, and looks at me with her eyebrows raised like, “You hearin’ this?” before busting out some classic shoulder shrugging moves.
The more I write about life with our girl, the more I want to write about life with our girl. I haven’t even’t told you about her being a water baby like her Mama, and how much I love (and could be a little nervous about) her fearlessness in the water.
But for now, I’ll end it here.
‘Til next time! xoxo
Kacie
