July Fourth

There is a lot of significance attached to the Fourth of July. For most Americans that significance is obvious, but for our little family the day has a new meaning. On this day last year we found out Lacey was pregnant.

It's amazing how a piece of information can change everything. I was thinking recently about how I had never really stopped to appreciate the fact that Lacey has given birth - not in the specific sense, of course, but the idea that she experienced such a life-changing (and body-changing) metamorphosis. She's now among the legion of women who are mothers, who have given over everything about themselves to create another human. Everything she was had to be reconsidered; the person she had been all her life had to be set aside. It's truly something to inspire awe.

But the reason I never stopped to consider this is that this whole thing hasn't ended. It's not an event that happened and now can be reflected upon. In fact, it's been a non-stop adrenaline rush since July 4, 2007 - the day our lives changed forever. For the last year we have been completely immersed - in the pregnancy, in the nervous weeks leading up to the birth and, since February 29, in the gargantuan, unending task of caring for an infant. We haven't had a chance to stop and catch our breath and think about what we've been through.

Our joke last year was that, rather than Independence Day, on July Fourth we would celebrate our "dependent's" day - the day we ceased being two carefree kids running giddily through the amusement park of life; the day we took on a greater, more solemn role as parents. The odd truth is that was the day we truly mounted the roller coaster - parenting has whisked us to dizzying heights and, just as quickly, brought us screaming to gut-twisting lows. And the ride is still just beginning.

So on this July Fourth we'll miss the friends and fireworks for the first time as our baby sleeps quietly upstairs. But we'll raise a heartfelt toast to the Jeremy and Lacey of July 3, 2007, and think of the adventure they have before them.