Nora's Chair

Brian pulled this toddler chair out of the garage this weekend and finally glued the seat to the chair (it was loose when we bought it) and after the glue dried, I put it in the family room, where Nora promptly sat in it to watch a video of Elmo and Sesame Street.

I can't remember where we bought this chair, but I can tell you I got it along with a stroller and some other items when I was right around 12 weeks of our very first pregnancy way back in 2002.

Just a week after we bought those two big things (the chair and the stroller), we went to a doctor's appointment where we found out that I had miscarried.

We went on a roller coaster ride over the next few years trying to get and stay pregnant, and after my third miscarriage, I gave away the box full of baby stuff I had acquired in the few times I was out and about, optimistic that that pregnancy would stick, then it wouldn't and the box would go back to the basement.

When I was pregnant with Jacob, I refused to get anything for the baby until I "knew" things were ok, and of course we never got that full assurance.

But that multi-colored chair survived my many purges, and just hung on a nail in the storage area with the camping equipment and spiders.

So yesterday when Nora sat down in the chair, it was just one of those moments where I was so glad I held onto that one thing from our very first pregnancy, and smiled in the moment of realizing that I could never have dreamed what hardship we would go through to get there. I imagined how many of the others could have sat there, sure.

But there was OUR daughter in HER chair, watching her friend Elmo.

And it was a really good moment.