A throwback! I posted this five years ago on my OTHER (now private) blog, I Still Hate Pickles. Today is Cooper’s fifth birthday and it seemed fitting to celebrate again the pronoun that changed so much in our lives!
8 weeks ago, one pronoun changed our lives.
HER.
From the other side of a surgical curtain, we heard it, and with it, our boy-lives expanded to include a she. A her.
Moments later, a face followed the word. Red and slick with vernix, mouth open in a howl–a gorgeous sound.
Swaddled tight on my chest, she looked and felt the same as my boys had–dark hair hidden under a hospital-knit hat, gray-blue eyes, and a perfect nose. A her, not a him, but definitely an us.


We have a lot to say, girls. And if she is anything like I was as a girl, there will be no less chasing than we do for the boys. She might also rip bows from her hair.

A note from now: She DOES rip bows from her hair. And hates dresses, but loves skirts and tree-climbing and swinging from the trapeze in the yard and also her littlest sister, Piper who is: “So cute and chubby!” (True story.)
