Erin was born on a warm and cloudy day ending with thunder showers late in the evening.  She was born on her Uncle Johnny's 17th birthday.  She weighed in at 7 lbs. 4 3/4 ounces.  When she was born she did not cry right away but did so when placed on the scale.  The doctor made a comment that she was typical woman.  She had jaundice at birth and we had a little longer stay in hospital than would be normal.  The day we were released from hospital I received some devastating news.  The doctor appeared with his stethoscope and I knew this was not typical.  He examined her all over and announced to me that she had a heart murmur.  I was in shock and I was very hard to console.  We visited the children's hospital when she was only six days old and she had xrays and and ECG!  It was hard to sit with the cardiologyst and hear that she had a hole in her tiny heart the size of a quarter.  Thinking of the size of her tiny little heart this was significant.  Weekly visits to the doctor's office went down to every three weeks and then once a month til she was four months old and then every second month.  She grew and thrived and at one year the specialist saw her again after repeating all the earlier tests.  We received good news that day.  The hole in her heart appeared to be shrinking.  We were told this was possible an quite a relief since the hold was between the chambers of her heart and not operable.  We were very thankful. 


Life with our Erin was quite interesting and entertaining.  She was a very busy little girl and she was a challenge to her older sister of three years.  She was a prankster and afraid of nothing.  When she had just celebrated her second birthday she ran away from my mother and I and her sister while shopping for clothes for a wedding.  I thought my mother was going to have a stroke.  We had security guards looking for her and after what seemed to be hours, which was actually about 20 minutes, she was found.  I had to go and collect her upstairs in the offices of this mall and was relieved to see her and angry at the same time.  The lady that was watching her had given her a toy to play with and offered it to Erin as we left the office.  Very objectively but firmly I advised this lady to please keep the toy as this would be seen as a reward for running away.  She promptly apologized and said that she never thought about that possibility.  No harm done.  This would not be the only time little Erin would disappear on us.  Many times we had to search out places for her.  One time she had crawled under an end table and we could not find her.  We searched the neighbourhood to no avail only to discover her crawl out from behind the table an hour later.  She was hard to stay upset with.  She had an angelic face and all she had to do was bat her beautiful, bright blue eyes and your heart would melt and all was forgiven.   


More to follow.