When I found out we were expecting De'Aysia I was really very scared. I am in the Navy and away from family so I knew that my husband and I would have to do this all on our own. My parents weren't able to come out and visit us during the pregnancy because they were sick and awaiting a kidney transplant in Colorado. Since we were going to be first time parents, we were quite nervous, but we decided to stick together and face parenthood head first.

When De'Aysia was born and I saw her for the first time it was amazing. She was beautiful and very quiet. She never cried, even when the nurses tried to wake her up a bit. She just stared at them. De'Aysia was so calm that she scared me at first and I kept asking if she would be okay.

Two weeks later she smiled at me for the first time during one of her feedings. I was singing to her and she stopped feeding and just smiled, even though her eyes were closed.

Just three months later I found out that I was going to be deployed overseas for six months so we planned to leave De'Aysia with her grandparents in Colorado during the deployment. Before our little family parted, we wanted to do something special together. On a chilly February afternoon we went on our first outing together as a family. We chose to take De'Aysia to Deception Pass because it is one of my favorite places. I wanted to show her something wonderful before I had to leave her and that was the perfect place. Unfortunately she was a bit grumpy because I had to wake her up and she didn't seem to like her first outing very much. After awhile she fell back to sleep though and her father and I enjoyed the scenery from the car. We had a lot on our minds as we anticipated leaving her while we were deployed.

Thankfully it turned out that I was only deployed for 3 months and we were able to rejoin De'Aysia in May. During the past few months it has been great to see her learn to express herself and it always makes me smile. We are excited about the future because every experience with our baby girl is so special.