Inked

I blame Emily for this.

Ever since I saw her get her cute little tattoo on her foot for her boys (her son plus her sweet baby boy she lost to miscarriage), I got this fool idea in my head to get a tattoo in honor of my kids.  Next thing you know, I'm trolling Pinterest for photos of tattoos and I stumble across a photo of a cute tattoo of little stars on the top of a gal's foot.

I got to thinking....stars would be cool.  I could get three stars - one for each of my boys.  And then it hit me.  I had to have four stars because I couldn't just forget about the baby I never got to meet.  How perfect would it be for that baby's star to be a shooting star?

Well, heck.  I couldn't get it out of my head.  I commented on Facebook that I was thinking about getting a tattoo and suddenly Isaiah's preschool teacher (of all people!!!!) tells me that her sister is a tattoo artist!  Would I like her to give me her number?  Ummmm.....sure?  Yeah, ok.  Do I really want to do this?

Apparently I did.  I dang near cancelled that appointment about a dozen times, but I knew deep down I didn't want to chicken out.  This was important to me, after all.  This was the #1 thing on my 25 for my 20s list.  No backing down, baby.

We dropped the kiddos off at their aunt's apartment for some crazy playtime while we headed over to Blue Lotus Tattoo.  Evan was teasing me quite a bit and I finally had to put my foot down (ha!) and tell him to knock it off and be supportive already!  My heart was thumping up in my throat, my blood pressure was through the roof, and I had a knot the size of Kansas in my gut.

I swear to you, I thought I still might back out.  I had visions of pulling my foot away at the very last second and running back to to the van at full speed with my pink flat shoe in hand.

Instead, I squeezed Evan's hand harder than I had during my labors with my children, dug my other hand into my thigh, and shut my eyes tight.  Less than 10 minutes later, it was all over.

And I love it.  I'm certainly not used to it yet, but I am just thrilled with the outcome.  It was so neat to explain to Isaiah that I had these stars "drawn" on my foot for him and his brothers.  When I told him that the little shooting star was for a baby that died, he got really sad and didn't really understand why it had happened.  I tried my best to reassure him that the baby was in Heaven and that it's ok.  He pointed to the shooting star and said, "Yup.  Here's the baby flying away to Heaven!"  It melted my heart and reassured me that this definitely was the right decision.

And even my darling husband concedes that it's "a really cute tattoo."

Win.