Happy 2nd Birthday Livie Bean.

Happy second birthday to my sweet girl!!

 I read through several of my old posts this morning... specifically the ones right after Livie was born, and the ones right around her first birthday. I realized that I've never shared any pictures of my favorite thing of hers. The one thing that I would probably grab first if our apartment was on fire.

The bag of her things that the hospital gave us!

Before we removed her from the life support, one of her nurses was explaining how everything would happen. She said that after they removed Olivia from all of her leads and cords, we would get to keep them. I remember thinking how nice that was of them, but I had no idea how much effort they would put into putting everything together for us. Each item is wound up perfectly with a little pink tag explaining what it was used for. The nurse even wrote the explanation as if it were Olivia explaining it to us. I remember crying and crying the first time I really looked at everything, which wasn't until we got home from the hospital.

This is actually the first time I have ever taken any of it out of the bag. I think I was worried that I would mess something up or ruin it before. It felt good to hold the things that touched her and made her feel comfortable. My favorite things are the little diaper and the tiny sunglasses that she wore while she was under the phototherapy light.

(it says: "phototherapy mask to protect my eyes")

(Seeing the diaper in my hand puts into perspective how teeny she was. It's a preemie size diaper, but the top of it had to be folded under so that it would fit her, otherwise it would go up past her belly button.)

I ordered myself a present for Olivia's birthday:





(front)

(side)

(front)

It's a memory keeper from Paper Coterie. If you haven't seen these before, you should definitely check them out. Their stuff is gorgeous. We have been keeping all of Olivia's things in four flowered boxes that stack up. Honestly, it takes up a lot of room. I was reluctant to put any of her stuff away at first, but lately, I had been thinking about how we should pack everything into a tub, and find some way to keep out only the most important things. I had been seeing other bloggers post about these memory keepers, and decided to just order one and see what it looked like. They are BIGGER than I expected, like 9.75x13 inches. It fit the bag of all of her hospital things, her footprints, lock of hair, and the cards that we received.

I love that it fits on the bookshelf, and I can order another one for the next little bambino that we might have some day. I think it will be cool to have them all lined up next to each other on a shelf someday.

I also ordered one for our wedding stuff, but I haven't put anything in it yet.

We are celebrating in a very small way today, but it feels right. To be honest, so far, this feels like an ordinary weekend morning... but who knows if it will stay that way.

Can you believe it's been two years? I definitely can't.

Thanks to all of you for two years of support and love. We couldn't have gotten to this point with out all of you - I'm sure of that.