I am trying to not get too over-excited.

I am trying to not hope for too much of myself in my little baby girl. I want her to be her own cute, little person, and not push any of myself upon her.

I imagined a miniature version of myself for so many years, and although I love my boys dearly and deeply and would never ever trade one of them for all the girls in the world, it has been such an amazing thing to have a girl come to our family, finally after all this time.

I can’t begin to count all of the dreams about a baby girl that I have had over the past 15 years of marriage. All of the lists and lists of girls names I have kept just in case we ever had one. All of the times I have walked into a store and painfully, consciously avoided the baby girl section because I couldn’t bear the thought of never being able to have one to dress up like my own real-life doll. All of the times I have been secretly so very jealous of family or friends who have had baby girl after baby girl, while I never got one to myself.

People would say, oh I am sorry you don’t have a girl. Are you going to keep trying for one? And I would say, oh, it is fine; I love my boys and I would be fine without having a girl. But I think deep down I never really believed that. Deep down I kept hoping and praying that we would someday be blessed with one in our family. Especially after having a few miscarriages along the way; painful, very challenging, and difficult to recover from and heal from. I worried that maybe those were my chances at having a girl…

We found out through ultrasounds what we were having for each of our four boys. But when I got pregnant with Bria, we decided to not find out, to be surprised when the baby was born. Because of my multiple miscarriages and other health issues, I had to have several ultrasounds with her pregnancy. Let me tell you, it was very difficult to not ever peek!!

But let me also tell you: when she was born, although there were only a few seconds of pure, absolute surprise and happiness (before the chaos of “She’s not breathing and something is wrong with her” began), the joy and gratitude of finally having my dream come true of having a little girl were so overwhelmingly amazing.

This precious little strawberry blonde/auburn haired, blue-eyed princess is one of the best things that has ever happened to me, and to our family. She is beautiful, she is sweet, she is stubborn, she is funny, she is smart, she is cuddly, she is fiery, she is adorable.

And she might — just might have curly hair like I did.

!!!

😀

Like I said, I have consciously tried to not push myself or my traits or likes or dislikes onto my kids, and I don’t want to do that with my daughter, either.

And I really still can’t believe that I can say I have a daughter. Even though she is almost 9 months old.

But when she woke up from her nap today with curls on her cute little head, it was really hard to contain my excitement. My mom always tells me that I had straight hair, like Bria, until I was a couple years old. Then I woke up from a nap one day with curls all over my head. I kept those curls until I started having kids of my own, and then my hair changed, as hair does, and it isn’t very curly anymore.

Obviously, this precious little princess of mine will always be beautiful to me, no matter what she looks like, whether she has curly hair or straight. But I am pretty much in mama heaven when I notice something in her that I can also see in me, or could see in me when I was younger.

The other day my friend Enrique told me that she looks like me. I was on cloud nine.

I love this baby in my arms so very much. I love her laughter, her bubbles, her babbles, even her cries. I love her little grabby hands, her little wave hi and goodbye, the way she leans when she wants me to hold her, the way she whips her head around when someone else is holding her so that she can still see me. I love that she loves me so much.

She will only ever love me about an ounce as much as I love her, but I love that she loves me back. I love that I have a miniature me. I love that she will be better than I ever was.

And today I loved her curls.