Happy Birthday to a sweet girl

Five years ago today, a fun little girl named Ashlyn came to the Gardner family. Getting her here was quite the event, with mom spending a month in the hospital before she was born. The delivery was a well-orchestrated event with all kinds of specialists involved, and under general anesthesia. We really weren't sure what the outcome would be, so imagine how happy I was as the mom when I woke up and found that all had gone well and we had a beautiful, healthy baby girl! To have both of us come through everything unscathed (well, alive at least!) really was quite a miracle.
Due to my condition after the delivery, I was not able to see Ashlyn for a couple of days. I saw pictures of her and heard about her, but I couldn't hold her until the evening of her second or third day of life (I honestly can't remember, as those days are all a blur to me). I think the first thing I said when I saw her was, "She looks like a turtle" and everyone thought that was rude. But to me, she was a cute little turtle!
We had no problem bonding despite our delay in meeting each other, and ever since then she has really been a joy to have around. She has personality to spare and has always been a little firecracker.
This morning when she woke up, she was kind of moaning and groaning, and I said, "Ashlyn, what's wrong?" and she mumbled something I couldn't really understand. I could tell she said something about her legs, but I couldn't make anything else out. I had to have her repeat it three times until I could tell that she was saying, "My legs are growing because I'm five!"
She wanted to open her present immediately (she's been carrying it around for a few weeks now), and what she got (from mom and dad) was a couple of new outfits. She looks like a cutie! For her birthday party, she wants to take the cousins to see Kung Fu Panda and then go out to dinner. We'll see the movie at the mall so she can go spend her money from all of her grandparents too! What a fun plan!
This lucky girl gets to celebrate for three days! Last night grandma and grandpa Gardner had a little party for her at their house because they left town late last night. We had pizza with all the Gardner cousins who live around here, and grammy bought her a Dora cake. Then we'll celebrate more today, and then tomorrow evening we're having a pool party at great grandma McQuivey's to celebrate the birthdays of Ashlyn, Haven (my brother Mike's little girl who turns 4 today), and Myles (my cousin Travis' little boy who was born on the 22nd, the same year as Ashlyn). So three days of partying for this little one! Lucky kid!
One cool thing is that Ashlyn's middle name is Lily, after my grandma M, and Travis and Sherrie gave Myles the middle name of Gordon, my grandpa M. So within a couple of days we had a little Gordon and Lily born, to remind us of our wonderful grandparents.
I'll post all of the pictures together later, but I wanted to wish Ashlyn a wonderful day and tell her that we love her so much!