Seven years ago, I was 3 months pregnant with our first child. My first thought as I watched the towers fall (the first I saw, because I had been making the long drive to USI and had turned off the Today Show probably just before it happened), was that maybe there were children on field trips there. Now, knowing more, I can't see the footage without thinking of the grade school children on one of those planes who were heading to LA because they had won a geography competition. That is always my first thought. But my second thought, that day, was that I had to raise my child (boy or girl) to be better than those men. To be a good, brave, strong, faithful, and kind Christian woman who could handle whatever horrible things life would throw at her. Today, while the kids were in school and preschool, I watched MSNBC's replay. I was glad I didn't have to explain these things to a child that day. Katie, Paul, and Nicholas still don't know anything about it.

I was 8 months pregnant with my second child and chasing my almost-3-year-old around the house playing when the phone rang and my friend said to turn on the TV. I was mad at her for a long time after that because I probably would have gone all day without knowing, and wouldn't have seen the live coverage of the second plane hitting and the buildings falling.
I remember the next day, a telemarketer called, going on as if nothing were different. I freaked out at him and started screaming.