hello little stranger!

my good friend elisa just gave birth to a teeny daughter.  the amount of crying i've done over the birth of this little person (that i haven't even met yet) is getting completely RIDICULOUS.  i break down when people, particularly good friends, have babies.  i just can't help but relive all of those moments that changed my life so profoundly, i am just overflowing with joy that another person, let alone someone that i love, is feeling right now those exact, spectacular emotions that i felt and it is only the beginning!  sweet holy goodness i can't even put into words how excited i am for her. 


i recently read an article about a mom who put it perfectly.  she said that when she first met her baby, her first emotion felt something more like, "well hello little stranger!", rather than an immediate, intimate bond or even acceptance that the baby was actually hers. that's exactly what i felt. quinn was just a precious little tiny stranger that i knew was my son but it took a while to grasp.  what i wasn't expecting was how quickly and completely that little stranger would make my heart so full, once i did grasp it, i thought it would literally explode. i of course knew i would love him immediately.  he was matt, and God, and me, wrapped up in a perfect little package but how fast my heart would go from just meeting this refreshing little stranger to feeling a love so deep, so intense, so fierce and completely debilitating, shocked me like nothing i could have prepared myself for. my little stranger. i had no idea how much i would love you. 


as i look at pictures of elisa holding her sweet ava emerson, i go back to those first precious hours of falling in love with my quinn and i just cry and cry. just like i did with cortney and beckett, lonnie and harper willow, and how i will feel x4 for misty and her four sweet babies. 


elisa, i am so ecstatic for you.  i will try my very hardest to keep it together when i do meet this new little lady but i'm not making any promises.