Wonderfully Weird Ava

I know, it seems like every post I do lately is a tribute to someone.  I don't know why.  I've always believed if you love someone you should tell them, because you just never know when time will run out.  That's why I tell the checker at Dillard's who is ringing up my huge bra that I like her earrings.  Maybe that girl gets sick of ringing up huge bras, maybe she's been taking a lot of flak from her supervisor for not folding those t-shirts just right, maybe she needs me to tell her I admire her taste in earrings.  You never know when the next time you'll get into Dillards will be...until your new bra's under wire snaps and proceeds to stab you in your boob at a wedding luncheon and you have to smile and make small talk when it feels like Stewart Little has invaded your undergarments and taken after you with a pokey pin.  That girl needed my compliment.  I just know it. 

The point is it was my baby girl's 4th birthday last Monday, the 23rd for those who don't want to try to count backwards in your head because you're just dying to know.  I did take pictures of her and her father playing in the snow that afternoon, but my computer is taking forever to download, so once again for you visual people out there, STBY.  That's a trendy acronym for Sucks To Be You.  I never use acronyms.  And I have no idea if it's trendy. 

Moving on.  Like I said Ava was born in 2005.  Her due date was on my own birthday, but due to my high blood pressure AKA "My doctor is going out of town for Thanksgiving and she wants that baby out now", I was induced two weeks early.  Like most blessings in my life, Ava came along just when I needed her, not exactly when I planned.

I got pregnant two months before Ava was conceived, once again unplanned.  For those of you squirming in your seat at the word conceived who are worried about where this is going I'll relieve the suspense and tell you I'm not going THERE.  I will say for a 22 year-old who had taken Adult Roles in high school and thought she was pretty book smart, I didn't know a whole lot about the effectiveness of certain methods of birth control.  And I'm glad, because maybe Ava wouldn't be here right now if it wasn't for my ignorance.

So I got pregnant and then I miscarried.  A week of migraines, dizziness and throwing up is a week that has been burned into my psyche.  It's funny, because I hadn't known I was pregnant until I miscarried but I mourned for that baby.  I laid in bed and wondered what I had done wrong in my life that would cause God to smite me with a curse.  I wondered if it was too much kissing back in high school.  I wondered if it was the Coke I drank.  I wondered if it was all the days spent at the gym over the last month or so.  I wondered if it was those hot wings from Pizza Hut.  As irrational as it was I was certain I had somehow killed my baby.  I pleaded with Heavenly Father for forgiveness, for reassurance, for comfort.  I had wanted that baby, badly.  As fate would have it, my brother and his wife got pregnant at the same time.  I remember telling my sister-in-law that I had miscarried.  I thought about how for years I would look at their baby and think of the one I had lost.

Two months later and wham-o!  Ignorant Inez strikes again and I'm pregnant.  I quit the Coke.  I quit the gym and I definitely quit the hot wings, in fact they were the least appealing food on the planet for the next nine months.  For the first few months I prayed like I had never prayed before.  Please let me have this baby, please let me have this baby.  I lived in constant fear that it would happen again.  I even called the doctor one time and told them I suspected I might miscarry.  The reply was, "We can't do anything about it.  If it's going to happen it's going to happen."  Something that hurt at the time, but a motto that pertains to just about anything that's out of your hands in life.

I am so grateful that Heavenly Father gave me Ava.  She is my sunshine, as cliche as that sounds.  She's made me a more empathetic human being.  She gives me a reason to be and I almost can't remember what it was like to be just me.  The pettiness of that existence pales in comparison to the smelly, wonderful, awful, joyous calling of motherhood. 

She's four.  What can I say?  It's like Dickens and his Tale of Two Cities..."It was the best of times.  It was the worst of times."  One minute she's my best girl, the next she is some monster that surely could not have come out of my womb.

Yesterday I told her that I'd always love her even if I get mad at her sometimes.  She told me she didn't love me when she's mad at me.  Figures.  You wait, I thought.  You wait until you have kids.  Then I told her she could do whatever she wanted to do in this life.  She replied, so can you mom.  You know I almost believe it when it comes from her lips.

Then today my husband had a friend over to play video games.  Have you heard of Call of Duty?  I have.  I hear the stupid guns sound effects nearly every night.  Back to the story, so I shut the door to use the bathroom and I hear Ava run down the hall and announce, "Don't go in there, Mom's pooping!"  Really, I just about took up permanent residence in there.  I thought about waiting it out until the friend in question went home.  But instead flew out of there in record time, thereby proving my daughter's assessment wrong.  Beet red, does not even begin to describe the shade of my embarrassed face.  And P.S. I was not pooping!  Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Still I love that little weirdo.  She is nearly always happy and silly.  On occasion I come up against her brutal honesty and her mean scowling face, but I love her anyway.