You are going to be so jealous...

Look at what I got to snuggle with today!

Meet Lucy, my neice. She's very, very smart.
And the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

Lucy was taking it all in. Her little eyes were very alert for a day old baby. She ever so slowly turned her fat little neck from one side to the other. Her eyes would shift gently. She'd yawn. She'd hiccup. She'd sneeze. She'd root. She'd find her hands and clasp them together. She'd stretch her toes...I could have eaten her up! Her hair curled up right above her ear. It stuck out just a very tiny bit. When she sucked, I think I saw a dimple in her right cheek. And she already knows her ABC's. (It runs in the family).

As I drove back from Birmingham this afternoon, I reflected on the almost magnetic pull that suddenly propelled me out of bed this morning. I couldn't get to Birmingham fast enough. The morning was almost reminiscent of a Sunday morning. I was rushing the kids, putting on mascara in the car, grabbing a pair of socks for Sunshine while yelling we'd put her shoes on in the car. You get the idea.

But you can clearly see from the pictures above why I was so eager to get on the road and get out of town.I knew there was a little girl waiting on me. And a bigger little girl, my little sister, waiting to show her off.

On my drive home,I experienced a keen awareness of the bond that sisters share. It is something that can't be replaced, manufactured, or even described accurately. It's not a friendship, which can come and go as often as the tide comes in. It's not a romance, which can sometimes suddenly end and both parties move on. It's something much more profound, more permanent, more secure.

It's one of the few things that can get a person out of bed at the crack of dawn and send them speeding down the highway to the hospital where her sister is waiting in her hospital bed with a newborn baby in her arms. It's beautiful. And so is Lucy!

Love, Aunt Tiffy