It speaks much more than words, though I’m usually quite terrible at it.

Usually.

Of course, this blog has been silent, and the noise that the silence makes in my head is near that of the thunder that shook my house two nights ago and knocked little wooden figurines off my mantle.  Or maybe less booming…more like the depth of silence you hear when you press your ear against a conch and hear the air whirring about it your ear canal and the pulse of your blood in your veins.

It has been a block, this blog.  Not a block from all of you, but a block from – well, from everything that used to taste so freshly sour, or bitter or sweet.   New grief has a depth of feeling around it that feels so horrifically awful and surprisingly releasing all the same.  Aged grief often tastes like paper pulp and sits in one’s stomach like an avocado pit.  

And then there is this:  we did an “open adoption” with our two remaining frozen embryos to the most wonderful young couple from across the country.   They traveled to cycle with our doctor and have the transfer done here.  We had dinner with them, laughed with them, cried with them, and wished up all the most delicious scenarios of how the children would get to know each other some day…special ‘sibling cousins’ who would be able to understand more about themselves through the connection of each other.

On the day or my twins’ birthday we got a call from our couple telling us that they were, indeed, pregnant!  My heart lifted in a way I had not felt in so very, very long to know that we helped to make a family come together just as God had planned it.  It seemed fitting to be on Abby and Will’s birthday.  Perfect.

But, her beta numbers were not rising the way they should.  And she did not continue the pregnancy.

And our heart just shattered for them that they tasted this dream, even met our children, only to have it pulled out from under them when everything seemed to point that this is where they were supposed to be standing.

I had forgotten how much I hate infertility.  Despite my own personal struggle, its razor edges had been dulled with the waves of parenthood and loss of Will.   I knew it was a horrible thing, infertility.  But to see it raked over this wonderful couple with such viciousness made me so aware again of its power…and its pain…and its evil games of hope.

And thus the block against this blog.  Because there is nothing I can/could say that makes this right for our dear couple - no delicious profanity that takes away their pain.

I guess I can only do this:  donating our frozen embryos was one of the most satisfying things that Mark and I have ever done as a couple.  To know that we were giving a chance of life for those embryos and a chance of children to our couple felt so amazingly fulfilling.  I sincerely wish that we had more to give them.

If you are thinking about donating your frozen embryos, I encourage you to talk about this with your mate.  The sooner they are used the better chance they have.  We initially went though a site called “SnowFlakes” and filled out their entire information packet (which was really helpful and bringing up all kinds of issues about who you want to donate to, do you want it open, etc);  however, the incredible cost for an adopting couple to go through Snowflakes (around $15K) turned us off.  Instead we went through a site with a minimal fee for adopting couples and free for donating couples called Miracles in Waiting where you basically self-match with other couples.

Sigh.  So there it is.  The post I wanted to write was the fairytale post about this couple becoming pregnant and letting us be the tiniest part of their already wonderful family.  But instead I come to tell you that I hate infertility and loss and miscarriages.

And…

that I’ve been obsessed with extreme couponing (yeah, seriously) precisely because it has not even the slightest bit to do with stillborn babies and fertility charts.   And I can’t promise that this new passion might find its way here despite its banal nature.

But it is what it is.

Abby and Sam are great.  Kmart is running a double coupon special this week.  Awesome.

It’s hot out.

Be back sooner than later.

Sincerely,

EVE

It is hard to celebrate Abby walking and laughing and grinning and talking and cooing and dancing and living and Will in a tiny little silver box upon our piano.  Still, I didn’t expect it would be so nearly impossible to force myself to plan a birthday for just one child.

Grief’s a bitch.

Frankly, that’s all I can think to say tonight.

Grief’s a bitch, and she kicks you smack in the teeth right when you find yourself smiling despite it all…right when you find yourself talking about healing and about lessons and about the good that God can bring from bad.

FFFFFFFFFFFttttttttt.   There’s her foot in your face, and you’re tasting blood and dirt again just like the day the world stopped when you lost whomever it was that you never really thought you would lose, and you find yourself unable to function to do even the slightest little thing.

It’s a real pisser (dare I say) to have the joy of Abby’s birthday and the sorrow of Will’s on the same day.  A pisser.

Anyway. 

Mark was the one who bought boxed cake mix and canned icing the day before her birthday and made the cupcakes.  It wasn’t that I didn’t want to…but that my ability to do so was encased in cement.  Logically, I knew what had to be done (I had picked out a sweet Little Tykes kitchen for her the week before)…but I could not.  It was also Mark who picked out three balloons:  a smiley face for Sam because he is our brave big brother, a butterfly for Abby because she is our little earthly angel, and a car for Will…because every little boy deserves a car.

We have no family here and we planned no big party.  Just the four of us at home to unwrap presents, go out to Mexican and then to visit Will’s tree and light his lantern.   Sam and I were delighted to find Will’s tree surrounded by patches of wild violets that had yet been mowed.  Sam was the first to pick one, but I think I was the first to put it on the tree.  We covered his tree with little violets.

And then we set Abby next to Will’s tree and told her about her twin brother.  She gleefully plucked off the little violets and shook the tree heartily, grasping tightly around its narrow trunk.

More bitter than sweet this first birthday was for me. 

We  plan to have an ‘official’ birthday party for Abby in the next few weeks with friends and birthday hats and fancy cake and whatnot.

…but I couldn’t fathom all that fanfare on the actual day that Will was born to this earth, even if his spirit already lived in heaven.

…lately I find myself in the place that I’m sure every babylost mother has been before me:  so intensely aware that the world moves on without your lost baby.  That the world forgets.  Good gracious, the world forgets us all eventually unless we do something extraordinarily great or extraordinarily terrible.  I have the energy for neither…just to remember my William and love my Sam and Abby.

And that’s as good as it gets for now.

This is not a news flash for anyone who knows me in RL.   And this is not the post to mourn this issue (I’m sort of telling YOU and MYSELF that at once, you see).  I’m saying this to explain that fact that I am in a sort of Craigslist Hell right now, because, well…we are not in need of keeping large bins full of tiny little sleepers and baby wash cloths and receiving blankets and bouncy seats and infant carseats et cetera, et cetera-aaaaaaah.

Side note, when we made the ‘done having kids’ thing official via a the big-ole V for Mark, I explained to Sam that “Daddy is having a little surgery so he won’t have babies any longer.”

To which Sam protested, “But Mommy, I LIKE Abby!  I want to keep her!”

ME…ROTFL!

(psssst…Mom, if you’re reading this…that’s Rolling-On-The-Floor-Laughing)

It wasn’t a choice, really, being done.  We don’t have the money for more treatments.  We really don’t have the money for more college tuitions – let alone more shoes and haircuts and soccer seasons and whatnot.  We DEFINITELY don’t have the money for another entire pregnancy with me out-of-commission again.  But more than money…my body is not only a poor study at getting pregnant, but it isn’t that great at actually being pregnant either.   I count myself extremely fortunate that I have two healthy children with the pre-term labor problems and other issues I had with both pregnancies.

But two doesn’t make up for losing Will.   I often feel our family is unfinished, but I know that having one more or two more or eight more kids would not make up the special place that Will has in my heart.

So we are at the end of an era.   And it feels sad – well – saddish like the sad you feel when you come to the end of summer or leave a good  job or something.   I’m not letting myself feel any sadder than that…or maybe I just now have perspective on true soul-ache.  And this does not feel like soul-ache.  It also feels incredibly freeing to know that I no longer have to pay any sort of attention to my menstrual cycle, or cervical mucus, or slap down large fees for rude, pregnant technicians to tell me that my cycle’s been cancelled because of a cyst…or that I could load myself up with all kinds of legal OR illegal drugs without care for the consequence to an unborn life (not that I would, Mom).

I’m sort of as normal (in a weird sense) as I get these days.

…of course, I caught the husband of our young couple quietly looking at Will’s picture on the piano as I did my best sales job on the Chicco Keyfit carseat and Snap N Go stroller (which I sold to them by the way) and remembered that I’m not so normal.

But then again…

who is?

Smirk…I know…I really am that naively optimistic.

So this time around I realize that this is not the case.  And I am slightly more prepared this time…in general…or at least I am more comfortable with winging it on a regular basis.  I only mention this more to reassure myself that Abby being, gulp 11 months old, really should be a crazy time. 

She is shear joy.  Truly she is.  But this child is into EVERYTHING.  God made her this way so we couldn’t get too angry with her while she tears up our house.  We had family come and stay last weekend, and while I cleaned the basement, Abby followed behind me and took apart all the good that I was accomplishing.   I put the Wii equipment away.  Abby happily discovered where we kept the Wii equipment and pulled it out, tasting every little plastic part.  I gave Abby her toys and created a barrier of pillows and laundry baskets to the Wii drawer.  This was like a presenting her with a Survivor obstacle course challenge to run.

Abby and Sam are keeping me busy enough that I haven’t had a lot of time to ponder how it will feel to have Abby’s birthday and yet a whole year away from our William coming up next month.  I don’t even have much time to run the parallel time of ‘what was I doing last year right now?’.  Maybe that’s a good thing.  I don’t know though…balance seems to be the key with grief.

In general we’re just plodding through from one little island of stability to the next.  I’ve been watching a lot of the earthquake/tsunami coverage in Japan almost in awe of the grand scale of that disaster.  I feel so awfully horrific for those families and it just about kills me each time the next news story up is about Charlie Sheen or the Royal Wedding or something.   Hmm…I guess we all need our distraction.  The news about Japan reminds me about the earthquake in Haiti from January 2010.

I never wrote a post about this, but, Will died the same day as the earthquake in Haiti.

When I watched all the coverage I felt so very, very small in the grand scheme of it all.  Not that Will didn’t matter…not that.  But I was also so keenly aware that there are always bigger things and more pain all about us.

But that pain does not erase our own…just gives us perspective.

So, my perspective is that I’m tired but generally happily so.  I wisely understand that I will be MORE tired as Abby gets closer to two not LESS.   Abby cut her eyebrow open last week, and Mark and I wisely determined that we could use skin-glue (much like superglue) instead of an ER visit as the cut was gaping but very small.

1. Try number one resulted in my finger being glued to her skin.
2. Try number two resulted (as she fussed and flinched) in her eyelid being temporarily glued open.
3. Try number three seemed to do the trick though my nerves were shot.
4. We decided we might be too dumb to use skin glue (it was quite a way from her eye by the way)…though it looks awesome now – not sure got past foreheads into the eye area again.

I try my best to ride the bumpy ocean waves of regular life…and even enjoy them (albeit in retrospect) – knowing that these are not tidal waves.  These are just what to expect.

Another wave today…Sam was quietly building legos at the kitchen table this morning when suddenly he began to cry and panic.  He had, you guessed it, lodged a lego up his nose.  I’m not sure what possesses a child to think to themselves, “Hmm, I’ve got a small lego, I’ve got a small hole in my nose.  Let’s see what happens,” but I guess this is pretty common.

So, we rode the wave.  Put my coffee down calmly (because I’ll be needing that for later), and commanded him to stop picking his nose and shoving the lego further up.  Squirted a little saline and tried to get him to blow it out.  No go.  Off to get the “Remove Lego From Nostril” kit:  flashlight, tweezers, towel to cover Sam’s eyes, alcohol swabs, wet wipes.

Sam’s sniveling and the saline really did help, as the slime helped slide the lego down back into a reachable position.  Luckily, Sam DID stay still when I told him to (so I didn’t stab him in the nose with the tweezers), and I plucked that baby out pretty quickly.  Sam had chosen a round red headlight-type lego for his ‘experiment’, which came out easily once I got a hold of it.  I would say that was pretty smart of him except that sticking the dang-on thing up there in the first place pretty much voids out any intelligence-motivated thoughts on his part.

As I tried to give my gravest lecture about not sticking thing up one’s nose, or ANY holes in one’s body, for that matter, Sam really seemed more interested in getting the lego back to so he could return to building.

Sigh.  A mother LIVES for those kinds of lectures.

Anyway, back to surfing the waves.  I know tsunami’s are out there…but there’s really no accurate warning system in life for those kind of things.  Maybe they’ll invent an app for that.

I managed not go completely certifiable while he was away.

I was nearly there toward the last few hours though.  Nearly.  He was supposed to be home around 5-ish…BUT the airlines lost his bag.  Sam danced in rocket ship circles around the living room, randomly launching himself from furniture, the dog…me.  Abby sniveled near my legs wanting to be held only to arch her back and reach for some far-removed object once she was in my arms.

All the while I raced around the house putting laundry away, dusting forgotten picture frames, and attempting to simultaneously finish every spring-cleaning project I started while he was away.  The dog barked and pleaded to be walked, only to stand outside, take long and cleansing breaths of the frigid evening air, lift his leg to every bush in the yard, and then happily root around the grass for small truffles of rabbit poo.

Meanwhile, Abby was pressed up against the sliding glass door crying in desperation as if I had left her forever while Sam continued to rocket ship blast into clean piles of laundry.

It was about now that I think I started to feel my grip of sanity lesson.  The little blood vessels dilated in my eyes to the point where they began to interfere with my vision.  I started seeing little sparkly stars and wavy lines.  My blood pumped in my ears like the obnoxious stereo of my downstairs neighbors in college.  Thump…thump…thump….dunga…dun…DUN!

Mark called to update me on his progress.

“Home now,” is all I remember saying, though maybe there was a tad more coherence?

Mark walked in the door and was tackled by rocketboy, the dog and Abby.  I stayed by the sink rinsing dishes and taking deep breaths as I was still trying to keep myself from, well, completely freaking out and doing whatever that might entail (pretty sure it would’ve entailed a LOT of screaming, breaking things, locking the dog out of the house, and nonsense talk).

Mark gave the kids spin-around rides and tickled them and kissed them and wrestled with Sam and took the dog for a nice, long walk.  He marveled at how much taller Sam seemed in just a week and Abby’s new tooth she ‘grew’.  We showed off Abby’s new tricks:  clapping to music, raising her arms to ‘so big’, and saying ‘mama’ again (she’s said it for a while, but then she stopped).    And, out of nowhere, she decided to say ‘dada’ for the first time.  I know, sounds too cheesy to be true…but it is.  Sadly, Sam is heartbroken that she has not said, ‘Sam-Sam’ as of yet.

As the evening passed, I felt my shoulders begin to relax, my jaw unclench, and my breathing to get deeper and calmer.  The weight of family was placed back between the both of us again.  I am so fortunate to have Mark to help carry the weight of these wonderful and exhausting kids.  I could finally take a deep breath again, after six days and nights.

Funny thing is, I hadn’t realized I wasn’t really breathing all that time.

* * * *

OK…

Haven’t posted a pic of Abby in a while.  Here’s a quickie photo shoot I did yesterday.  And also Sam a week or so ago with some serious bedhead issues.  I feel like I’m getting my mojo back with the camera again.

Now, if I could only find the time and unlimited photography budget…

“Hey, are you all sick still again? I hope it is a busy-good reason, not a busy-sick reason you haven’t been on!”…Tasha

First of all, thanks for asking about me.  That’s awful nice.  Second of all.  Yes, Abby was sick last week with some sort of Roseola-ish ailment, followed by a nice finish this week that looked much like an unfinished ear infection – what the pulling on the ears, poor sleeping, fussiness and all.  So I took Abby to our trusty pediatrician only to be told (within 2 minutes of the visit) that her ears looked crystal clear and the tugging was due to referred ear pain from her teething. 

For this I paid $110, as we have not met our deductible for the year yet (though we our mighty close thanks to the January/February RSV awesomeness).  For $110 dollars, I’m pretty sure I should’ve gotten a free mammogram or something.  Or maybe something a slightly less weird like a free teeth whitening or a haircut.

Sheesh I need a haircut.

In an effort to save money or in one of my odd stand-off things that I randomly do (one year, pre-kids of course, Mark and I saw how long we could go without turning on our heat.  It turned out badly for my toes, but that’s a whole different story)…anyway, I haven’t gotten a haircut since October.  It’s getting pretty wicked, the hair situation.

But that’s not really what I meant to say here.  What I meant to say is that even though Abby’s been sick, the real reason I deserved a freakin’ haircut AND a tooth whitening and massage and a glass of champagne at the doctor’s office for my $110 2-minute ear-check-up is because Mark has been out of town on a business trip for a million years now.

Well maybe not a million.

But close.

And I am on the very edge of sanity.

I was really worried that I would delve into this deep valley of depression with Mark being gone and Abby and Will’s birthday approaching this spring.  But I was sorely mistaken.  I am far, far too exhausted to be delving.  Despite the fact that I am the kiddo’s primary caretaker…the very absence of escape is exhausting.   I find it hard to fall into a real sleep, as if my brain continues to trot on the treadmill even as my body goes through the motions of nighttime.

I’ve watched the coverage of the protests and massacres in Tripoli until it turns my stomach at 3AM.  I’ve watched the insides of my eyelids.  Listened to the kids sleep.  Last night, I practically ordered Alyssa Milano endorsed WEN haircare products until I came to my senses.

So, here’s my take-away from Mark’s recent trip (cue Doogie Howser, M.D. Casio keyboard music)…

1. Single parents have it tough.  I am in awe.
2. Mark does more than I usually give him credit.
3. Mark is definitely the fun one.
4. I lose my sense of humor on business-trip day 3.
5. I stop making the beds on day 2.
6. I HATE walking the dog.  We need a fence.
7. I’m glad we get to be a family together usually.
8. I’m glad Mark usually walks the dog at night.
9. Mark owes me a day at the spa.
10. Or at least a haircut.

Well…let’s see.

1. Abby had RSV last week.
2. Thus the finale in a showcase of illness from our entire family, most likely caused by our friend, RSV.
3. Abby’s RSV led to a nasty ear infection (note the word ‘nasty’, I’ll be using it liberally).
4. Abby’s nasty ear infection required amoxicillin, thus leading to a right-nasty poopy blow-out diaper each morning.
5. Abby’s RSV ear-infection poopy-blow-out-diaper-nastiness spread from her tush to her neck and soaked through her onsie right into her sleeper and quite often into the sheets.
6. Abby’s RSV ear-infection poopy nastiness no-doubt spread onto her hair and extremities while trying to free her from her night-night clothes, despite my best attempts at throwing as many wet-wipes into the mix as humanly possible…
7. …all this while Sam circled us as if he was playing duck-duck-goose while plugging his nose and yelling “Ewwwwwww!  Abby stinks!”.  Though he was of some use as he would unhappily ditch the doubled-bagged and knotted bag of diaper and wipe nasties into the dirty diaper box in the garage and put the other bag of night-clothes poopy nastiness in the laundry-room for me to tackle later…
8. …and the reason he was home was because we were SUPPOSED to have a blizzard.
9. So, of course Abby’s daily poopy morning mess meant that she also received a morning bath…
10. …often before I had a chance to take the dog out….
11. cue dog peeing on the floor….
12. ….and definitely before I had a chance to fix the kids breakfast….
13. cue Sam whining that he was hungry throughout the entire poopy ordeal (apparently, this kid’s appetite is hardy)…
14. ….and often before I also had a chance to go to the bathroom….
15. …cue my own special potty dance whilst my hands are dipping in pleasantly warm bathwater.
16. Of course, Abby got the most demonic diaper rash ever.  So, that was no fun for me to torture her with the zinc creams and certainly less fun for her.
17. And we didn’t even get that blizzard anyway.  We did get some ice, and then a whole lot of sleet…which is like tiny little frozen ice pellets.  A random guy being interviewed on the news said this, “It’s like driving on them dippin dot things”.  I thought that was an accurate descriptions.  We got several inches of dippin dots.  And then some snow.  Not a blizzard.
18. But I was still stuck at home with a sick baby and a bored -out-of-his-gourd 4 year-old.
19. On Saturday, we got a surprise maybe 4 inches of snow they didn’t forecast.  Weather-men (or ‘persons’) are sort of like doctors.  They can tell you what they THINK will happen most of the time, but they don’t really know.  It’s all just a guess. 
20. Laundry, as I’m sure you can imagine, has been a special treat.
21. Abby is feeling much, much better now.  She is back to insisting upon eating dogfood and those dang-on little fake ash things they put in gas-fire places that I try to block – but this kid is stealth I tell you.  Stealth.
22. All in all RSV wasn’t so bad, it was the ear-infection antibiotic that I think really put us in the toilet.
23. Literally.
24. So that it where I’ve been.
25. Where’ve you been?

Random alert.

Here’s a picture of Sam and his snowgirlfriend.    It wasn’t meant to be a snowgirl…but I swear this looks like a prom pic if I’ve ever seen one!

…honestly, I think I like cleaning up dog poop better than the elmusified food, caked and wedged into the tight and impossible to reach crevices of said highchair.  Dog vomit even…at least that is usually out in the open – on our nicest carpet, in fact.

Sorry if I grossed you out.

It’s just one of those mornings.  I already spilled an entired large container of vanilla yogurt on the kitchen floor and didn’t catch the dog OR the baby in time before they both were a creamy, sticky mess.  But at least they smelled like a glade air freshener.

Speaking of nastiness.  Sam and I were playing the ‘name sticky things’ game while he helped me clean up the yogurt debacle.  So, imagine how my appetite nose-dived when he shouted to me from the the guest bathroom,

“Mom! I know something else that’s sticky!  The toilet!”

Um, yay for me as a Holly Homemaker.

Not.

Anyway.

So, that’s a tame picture of Abby eating, by that way.  She’s usually MUCH messier.  For months, she refused all finger foods, opting to stick with her little stage 2 jars of purees.  And then some sort of ravenous teenage boy emodied my 9 month old around the first of January.  She skipped all stage 3 foods and went right to whatever we’re eating – nevermind she does not have a single tooth in her mouth.  This child can eat. 

So back to my initial point…I can clean up vomit of any kind:  my own, my children’s, the dog’s…diapers don’t scare me…I scoff at laundry, toilet and tub stains…but I do not love detailing a highchair three times a day.

I love Abby.

NOT her highchair.

*  *  *  *

Got another grosser than gross?

 It snowed a foot last night.   I watched it gather all night long in such industrious showers with the tiniest speckle of snowflakes, each piling on one the other in such architectural perfection.  A foot is a big deal around here.  Something to celebrate.

When I looked upon our new arctic landscape this morning, first thing I searched for was Will’s tree out our kitchen window, as it stands not much more than the snow measures.  With the lantern Mark had staked on Will’s angelversary as a beacon, the little tree’s top cropped up through the snow and took my breath.   It peeked in the perfect shape of a cross.

Pause.

One of my many awesome commentors, Sophie said:  “It’s amazing how you can actually grow to love a tree,” in response to my post about planting Will’s tree last fall.  And little did I truly know then what she knew.  How much I have grown to love his tree in these past few months – as if it is the container for the deep love that I have to give Will that I cannot give to his body and spirit together.

I love that tree.

And so I freed it from the snow…

…while Abby napped and Sam made snow-angels and ate fistfuls of heavensent snow.

Yes, Sophie, I agree. 

It is amazing how one can grow to love a tree.

Anyway, thanks so very much for the kind words and prayers and thoughts that you gave to us last week upon Will’s angelversary.  I’ll admit the earlier part of the week was pretty rough.  On the actual day, I tried to keep myself in ‘grief lite’ mode.  I resisted the temptation to replay the entire day before I learned that Will died.  Instead we slept in (well, cuddled in bed as a fam I should say).  We spent the morning in our pajamas and ate homemade waffles and made plans to go to the Magic House (a local children’s museum) for the rest of the day.  As we crossed the Mississippi river to the city, I dared myself to see it as the vision of the frozen river the day of Will’s death is seared in my memory. 

And so I looked.

We were on a different bridge this journey, downriver where its wider, and though there was an island of ice in the middle of the river, the water streamed freely around it.  And my breath seemed to free in that movement of water, as if it had been caught for a year and was now undammed with great force.

I did think of Will when we were at the Magic House.  We talked about him a few times.  When Sam went into the hospital playroom were they had a pretend nursery, we picked out a baby boy and named him William.  Sam bathed him, diapered him, fed him, rocked him, changed him, swaddled him and put him to sleep.  I cursed myself for forgetting my camera.

But all in all we just had fun.  We played with bubbles and static electricity and magnets and water  and  blocks  and musical instruments and shadow walls that remembered your shadow, and danced until we were huffing and puffing (or at least I was – which is not saying much) in front of a camera that projected a colored image of our movement that looked like a dozens of us.  There was so much more there…it was actually dizzying. 

We stopped for Mexican on the way home, practically too exhausted to eat.

And once we were home, we wrapped Abby up in a blanket, put Sam’s hat and gloves back on, and went out to the front yard.  We looked to the sky where Will’s star is, near Gemini, and told him how much we missed him.  And then we trudged through the snow to the backyard, Mark carrying a shepard’s hook and lantern and pitched the lantern right above Will’s tree.  Sam steadied the lantern, and I stayed just long enough to snap a few pictures.

Just a few.

Because it was about five degrees out.

And we were freezing.

I fell asleep much easier than I expected I would, though it might have had to do with the Benadryl I took for this evil illness.   Though there was no great levity on Thursday, since Will was still gone and would remain gone, there was just the slightest release in knowing that we had made it past the first ‘big’ anniversary.  I’ve come to know, now, that I don’t expect the special times to get easy as if Will never was.  How could I unremember my own child?  But I am trying my best to embrace this life I have and live it to the fullest.

The day after Will’s angelversary, I brought Abby home still bundled from a car ride to take Sam to pre-school.  She was looking so sweet and delicious, I had to snap a few pictures.

So there you are, my muddlement of a post.   Here’s a good question for you:  what do you do when you’re feeling down?  If you have loss issues, have you dealt with your anniversaries or special days?