Olivia

I'm having a visitor this weekend, and I can't wait. I met her when we were both teaching. I was teaching 9th and 10th graders English and math, and she was teaching them flute after school. We were both a few weeks pregnant with our first babies, and we had all sorts of things to discuss. Names, bottles, diapers, gender, pregnancy woes: these were all topics of our new friendship. We clicked from the beginning. There was only one small problem. We were stupid.

Not only were we stupid, we were CLUELESS. I mean dumb as rocks, everyone-says-it but-that-won't-be-me, naive. We said things like, "I'm looking forward to the challenge of balancing everything after the baby arrives." And, "I can't wait 'till this kid comes out so I can get some SLEEP!" You see? Stupid.

We ended up, providentially I would say, having our babies on the same day. At this point we were still stupid, calling each other from our hospital beds saying, "Call me when you get home and I'll come over with the baby! We can have our first playdate next week!" And then we got home. That call didn't happen for three weeks. When my phone finally did ring, I heard no hello, no "want to come over for a playdate?" All I heard was, "PLEASE tell me this has been the hardest three weeks of your life too."

We forged through that first year of nursing woes, cholic, and sleepless nights and educated ourselves out of our stupidity with afternoon naps and big bowls of M&Ms. We commisserated. We cried. We laughed. And we grew up.

There was the next fateful phone call that came just 12 months later. I was frantic, crying, pacing, heart pounding. I picked up the phone and dialed. No greeting. No "How are you?" Just "I'M PREGNANT" screamed into the phone. How would I handle another baby when I was just getting on my feet from the first one?

She ended up pregnant within a few months (without me having to sneak into her house and sabotage her birth control), and we delivered our second children 10 weeks apart. When she called to tell me she was pregnant with her third child, we were waiting on a referral for our daughter from China. When I told Jon the news, he asked, "When is she due?"

"December," I replied.

"I guess that means we'll be getting our daughter around December then."

And he was right. We first held Maddie Rae in our arms on October 30, and 6 weeks later Henry arrived in her arms.

We don't take ourselves too seriously, and we can laugh at all our past stupidity. We can get a shopping high like you wouldn't believe, and we can talk for hours. I know I can call her at any time in any situation, and she will know the right thing to say. The years have taken us to different states and even countries, but one thing has remained constant. We will always be kindred spirits, BFFs, LYLASs, and we will probably look back on our naive present selves and laugh too. Remember before our kids were teenagers and we thought we were in the hard part? Ha! We were so Stupid! But the secret is, she's not stupid. She's brilliant, and I can't wait to spend the whole weekend with her!

Us having a cold one in the Russian Vodka Bar in Hong Kong. This was the only picture she took the entire 10 days she was visiting me in Hong Kong. Hmmm. Not sure what that says about us...
It all began with these two...Jack and Danielle. We're still holding out hope that they'll fall in love and get married. However, when they get together they fight constantly. We swear something was in the water on September 17, 2001 to make these two so fiesty!

And her brood now. Aren't they adorable? :)