My Love, In Tattoos

A long time ago I decided I liked tattoos. I wanted one. I wanted something that meant something really special to me and would make me smile every time I looked at it. I wanted one to represent my mom and Chuck - the two most important people in my life. My mom and I have a thing about sunflowers. Chuck and my wedding song was At Last. I spent hours drawing those two things together, figuring out ways to incorporate them into one design. Hours turned to days, days to months. A year or two later, I was still talking about it incessantly, but was scared. Finally, Chuck told me to put up or shut up. It was the walk-in appointment day at the tattoo parlor I was going to go to, and Chuck told me I could either go get it that day, or SHUT UP ALREADY. (Okay, he probably didn't say it that harshly.) So off we went, and here's what happened (photo taken tonight - it was much more vibrant 8 years ago or whenever I got it):

When I was pregnant with Jack I started thinking that I'd like to have a tattoo to represent him too. After he was born I waited and waited, trying to think of what I'd like to get. We got our first-year portraits done, and one of them just stuck out to me. That was the one. Again, it took me awhile. I went the day before Mother's Day when Jack was one and a half. Here's that one - that's his foot in my hand, with his initials (JMV), but it's backwards because apparently I'm photo-challenged:

After that I knew I would have to get one for any other kids we might have. You know how second kids complain that our parents didn't fill out our baby books the way they did for their first kid? Yeah - well this would be MUCH worse. "Mom got a TATTOO for me and nothing for you! Ha ha! She loves me MORE!" Okay, so that was a done deal before Ryker was even a twinkle in our eye. Then the wall mural went up, and as Marianne (3rd generation family friend) painted the flag on the wall and harassed us for the initials of Baby To Be Named Later, I knew that would be the tattoo for him. Here's the Flickr set of photos of the nursery. This one took me a LONG time to go do. Not because I'm scared of the permanency, or the pain, or the needles, or wondering if it was the right thing to do. I was just nervous. Normal state for me, as you know. Anyway, I finally committed to doing it, thanks to some gentle nudges from friends and Dr. Tom. I went on Friday, loved the tattoo artist, and here it is. It's still healing, and the picture is a bit dark, but you'll get the idea:

I have one more planned, and it's for ME. I'll get that sooner rather than later, I hope. Then we'll see what happens. I told my tattoo artist I was going to be done then, maybe, and he looked up from his work and laughed at me. "Yeah, I've heard THAT before."