Hard to believe Brianna is going to be 15 tomorrow. Where did those 15 years go? It seems like only yesterday that I was writing my diary of the day while Laurel was in labor. I remember Tom saying that their doctor recommended we wait a month before coming to see her and obviously we could not wait that long!
My hopes for our relationship as she was growing up never quite happened. I rarely got to see her and in the beginning her sleep was so poor that they had her on a rigid schedule which made it more or less impossible for me to see her, so she never knew who I was and when I tried to hold her, she would cry.
Laurel's favorite picture of the two of us was from Christmas that year. They had just arrived at Walt's sister's house and she handed Brianna to me. Brianna immediately burst into tears (which she always did) and Laurel thought that picture of me holding the crying Bri was cute.
As she grew into a toddler, she still didn't like to be around me. When Laurel gathered us together to take a picture, Bri made sure that she was with Walt, not with me. That happened for several years but things began to change a bit when Lacie was born and loved to have books read to her. Bri would sit beside me while I read books. I finally felt like her grandmother.
I remember when she and I made clam dip for the first time...passing the family tradition down to the next generation.
She eventually got to the point where she was happy to see me when I came to visit. We went to several of her school things, which were always fun. I wrote both girls letters regularly, to keep me in their mind and as she got older, Bri started to write me back. Now she has her own phone and we exchange text messages.
She's a smart girl who loves math (not at all like her grandmother!) and she's been in a lot of activities in Santa Barbara. Alice Nan has become more of a grandmother to her than I am and takes her to a lot of her activities.
But I love her and am so proud of her and so pleased that she has become such a wonderful teenager. Our relationship is different than I thought it would be before she was born, but it works for us.
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PHOTO OF THE DAY
2008
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