Day ~176

Tomorrow morning, wee babe, you and I will get on a plane together for the first time! We're going to see your great aunts, great cousins, and great grandma Margie. They are throwing us a party, all in honor of you, the 6th generation first born girl-child.

We're going to Colorado, to a beautiful town tucked right up against the Rocky Mountain foothills, where your great-great-great grandfather immigrated in 1901. He got on a boat in Italy with two of his brothers (they left the youngest one behind with their mother and father), and made his way all the to wild west, where he started working in a coal mine and married your great great great grandmother. She was a wonderful, magical woman - you might even be named after her. I am lucky enough to have memories of her, since she was still alive when I was a little girl. That's right - we had five generations of first born daughters alive at the same time! One day I'll show you a picture of all of us together. You are the next one in the chain ...

So we will go the town where your great great great grandmother raised her children, and then your great great grandmother did the same. And then your great grandma raised my mother, and then I was born in that very same town ...

The party will have lots of food, because, well, that 's what Italian women do. They don't always get along very well in the normal way - too much hot blood and opinion and everyone talking at once. But they sure do know how to eat!

I'm sorry I have this terrible cold, and that it makes me sneeze and jostle you all around in there. And toss and turn all night long ... I hope I feel better in Colorado, where the air is nice and dry, and the sky vast and blue. We will sleep all tucked in with your grandma - my mom - and maybe she will be able to feel you kick in the early morning, the way daddy does now that you are growing so strong! We watch you move, from outside, now. We can see my belly jump around, and now we're waiting for you to get big enough that we can see the point of your little elbow when you roll over, and maybe the poke of a tiny foot.

And when we come home to beautiful Portland, where everything is green and wet and the people are quirky and interesting, we might set up your crib and start washing and folding some of the tiny outfits that have been piling up on the "second bedroom" (soon to be your room!) floor since we found out you were coming. That's right - Nonna has gone a little crazy at the thrift stores. She does have the magic touch, though! All kinds of pretty, brand new little things just for you, at about $1 apiece.

I'm glad you're all curled up in there, busy growing. I bet the next time we're on a plane together, you'll be a lot louder ...