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My precious Abigail,

Before I ever knew that you would exist, I loved the idea of you. From the time I was a little girl, I always believed I’d be a Mommy; it was the one thing that I always knew I wanted. As I watched our friends and family have children, I couldn’t wait to have a baby of my own so that I could love you, teach you about the world and enjoy watching you grow and become your own person. Your Daddy and I tried to get pregnant for a long, long time. It was such a hard thing to want something so much and wonder whether we would ever get what we wanted. Your Daddy was always so strong and supportive, though, and he always believed that it would happen, even when I had trouble believing it ever could.

Finally, of course, it did!

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We had Abby’s first birthday party this afternoon. Well, her first first birthday party - we’re having another one of sorts on Friday, but this was the “important” one. The one with grandparents and the Very First Cake.

She ate a lot of cake. There was not as much on the floor as I thought there was. No, it was all in her little belly.

I think she liked it.

I was really hoping that for Abby’s first birthday party, we would actually have the whole family in one place. For a good while, I thought that it would happen - I’d changed the party time to accommodate half of the family, and had strong promises from everyone that they’d be there. Until yesterday, it was all going to work.

Then I got the phone call from my sister-in-law letting me know that she, my brother and their three kids weren’t going to make it. For once, though, I figure that their reason is good enough. My niece - who turns four years old on Monday - has the chicken pox. She really feels miserable, and the risk of Abby getting it at her age is just a little too high for anyone’s comfort, even though the contagious period has probably passed.

With three birthdays in two days - my nephew will be five on Monday when his sister turns four, and Abby’s birthday on Tuesday - the last week of November is always going to be a slightly crazy time in our family. We’ll just have to delay that craziness a week or two until everyone is feeling better!

We did Thanksgiving dinner yesterday at our house. It was low-key - just the three of us plus J’s parents and sister - but even a low-key Thanksgiving dinner is still a big meal to pull off well. It’s not a difficult meal to prepare by any wild stretch, but there’s always that sense of importance to it, like there might be some dire consequences if it doesn’t go well.

When I was growing up, I used to think that the big holiday meals - Thanksgiving especially - came together through some mysterious process that may or may not have involved arcane rituals and speaking in tongues. (Probably just a bit of under-the-breath cursing, I’ve since discovered.) Once I was out on my own, I found that I could prepare those meals myself, but they were somehow never the same. The food was all there - the turkey, the stuffing, the sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie - but there was something missing, and I never quite knew what it was.

This year I think I figured out what was missing: confidence. The feeling that I’m in charge of the meal, and I can do it my way without apology to anyone who isn’t in charge of the kitchen. I decided how the table would be set (with the good silver, passed down from my grandmother) and I was in charge of making sure that everything ended up hot at the same time. I was the one shooing my “helpful” husband out of the way and telling him to just go pour some wine or something. It was my house, my kitchen, my dinner, and for the first time I really didn’t care whether someone would rather have mashed potatoes or candied yams instead of what they were getting.

I finally figured out that I really am the grown-up now. I’m not an imposter just filling the stage until the star appears - it’s my stage to fill. Best of all…this year, finally, I’m the mom.

Last year on Thanksgiving, I was impatiently waiting to meet the baby I’d been wanting for so long. I was just past my due date and finally getting tired of being pregnant, really feeling ready to get the show on the road and get the baby born already.

We went out for dinner with my in-laws and my best friend - I was afraid to go all the way to my in-laws’ about 40 minutes away, and didn’t think that trying to plan for a big meal at our house the day after my due date was a great idea for any number of reasons. I wasn’t a big fan of going out, really. Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holiays of the year, and going out to eat just never “feels” right, somehow. We had a good meal, though, despite the fact that I finished dinner just as pregnant and not-in-labor as I started it.

This year, I have so much to be thankful for that I can’t even believe it myself. I couldn’t have imagined the past year - I tried to, and it hasn’t been anything like I thought it might be. It’s been harder, and better, more frustrating and infinitely more joyful than I could have believed. When we go around the table and talk about what we’re thankful for, I can start and end right here.

Incredible as it sounds after going all the way downtown last night, leaving Abby at home with a sitter, we are actually going out again tonight. I know, we are wild and crazy people. Tonight is parents’ night out at the gym we belong to - we can leave Abby there for a few hours and have a grown-up dinner or catch a movie, and pick her up worn out and ready to snooze the night away. It’s cheaper than a real babysitter (although not as cheap as the “beg family and friends to do it for nothing” plan we usually go with), but she loves the people who work there and it’s nice to be able to get out without hassling everyone we know to watch Abby while we’re gone.

My number one goal for parents night out? Remembering to eat my dinner slowly instead of bolting it down while tossing food to the

Tonight we’re heading downtown to a hockey game. We haven’t done that in a long time - we used to have season tickets, back in the day, but cancelled them a few years ago when the ticket prices kept going up but the quality and success of the team kept going down. Good friends of ours still have tickets, and we keep meaning to go to a game or two with them, but one thing or another always seems to get in the way.

But now the team really, really wants us back. Really! We’re “VIPs”, you see, and they want to wine and dine us and part us from our hard-earned cash once again, so they’ve offered us tickets to view the game from a luxury suite for the low, low price of fending off the sales pitch that’s sure to come our way while we’re there. If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s fending off sales pitches, so we’re going to go and enjoy the game and see if we can remember what it was like to be young and free with both our time and our money.

Abby is going to be an old hand at the birthday party thing before her time rolls around. We’ve been to at least one birthday party every week or so for the last couple of months, and this week had one party yesterday and another today. It’s fun for everyone, but I sometimes worry that since Abby’s birthday is at the end of the line, everyone will be all partied out by the time it’s her turn.

I don’t ever want her to feel slighted because everyone seems a little less excited for her party than for others. Yeah, probably overthinking, especially since she’s only turning ONE at this point. It’s not like she’ll feel slighted no matter what happens. But a few years from now, I’ll still be worrying about the same thing, I’m sure. I guess it’s what we do as parents - if there isn’t something real to worry about, we’ll find something to latch onto anyway.

This week is just a bit crazy - we have something scheduled every single day. Since we’re all just getting over the nasty bug that’s been going around, it seems even more tiring than it might otherwise. The sad thing is that the things that we have scheduled are things we’re looking forward to - birthday parties, getting together with friends - but it just seems a little overwhelming when I look at the calendar. And the holiday season hasn’t even started yet!

Tonight a bunch of the mothers in my mom’s group are going out. Now, we don’t generally need an excuse to dump

leave the babies at home with their dads while we go out and get crazy, in that way where sitting around a table talking and drinking a single glass of wine apiece is “crazy”. Tonight, though, we have an excuse. One of us is leaving - her husband has a new job (promotion? something like that) and they’re moving out west at the end of the week. It’s a good move for them - a better job for him, and a move to a place where they have family and a lower cost of living.

It’s made us all think about what’s keeping us here. We’ve all thought - seriously at times - about moving away. The DC area can be a hard place to live. It’s expensive, no matter how you slice it. The traffic is usually a nightmare, even way out here in the boonies where we all live, and while we can escape the worst of it by timing our trips well, we all live with people who have to deal with a regular commute. (And we’ve all been there - we know what we’re (not) missing!) We could move somewhere else and get twice as much house, better schools, and eliminate a ton of financial stress.

So why do we stay? More and more…we stay because of each other. These women have kept me sane for the last year, and I can’t imagine how I could find such a supportive, fun group of friends if we went somewhere else. I’m sure I would, at some point, but it would never be quite the same.