Yep, she’s calling Daddy like she calls the dog 😉
April 10, 2014
Now you see it…
…now you don’t!
April 10, 2014
Bubble wrap from a box Grandma sent…or toy??
April 8, 2014
New tradition: ice pop after dinner.
April 8, 2014
Saturday was crazy! Hayden and I had boot camp with the neighbors at 9, we had soccer at 12 (which Hayden and I are coaching), and then we went to the Heritage High School Girls’ Lacrosse game at 3. Finally, I went out with my former coworkers for a Girls’ Night Out. It was sunny, but oh so windy all day. Harper was under the blanket for most of the soccer game and for most of the lax game. However, it was great to be out in the fresh air!
Huddled on the bleachers at the lax game.
Getting a ride in the “gatorade” with Auntie Kate.
Helping me put on make up to go out.
Look at her expert job putting on eye shadow and chapstick.
April 8, 2014
Sharing the iPad and loving on each other.
April 2, 2014
I think it was a beautiful day outside. I was inside tonight…
April 1, 2014
No fooling here–it was another beautiful day! As soon as I got home we went outside. We were there until Hayden got home three hours later (darn traffic!). Loving this weather!
March 31, 2014
Finally, a beautiful day. We walked to Sweet Frog to celebrate Harper’s awesome job potty training (that’s one mile each way). In one week she earned 28 stickers! And since these are virtual stickers inside an app, she only gets stickers when I’m home with my phone. So this awesome week doesn’t even account for what a great job she does all day when I’m at work!
Say it with me, “Girls are so much easier to potty train!”
March 31, 2014
Today is Cole’s due date. To type that out, with no little baby sleeping next to me, with no baby still growing inside of me, pains me. I tried to rationalize today as just another hurdle in the grief cycle. I thought it would be hard, but Hayden and I had been doing well lately, and I didn’t expect it to knock me over. But it did. And not just today. This whole past week has been hard. And by hard I mean full-out crying at work at lest twice a day. Twice a day was a “good day” last week.
As many of you know, I’m not a sit-and-dwell-on-it type of person. Life knocks you around and you really have no choice but to get back up and keep going. You can’t change the past, just learn from it and keep moving. And that’s how I’ve tried to deal with this. It sucks, it hurts, it’s all-out shitty…but we have to move on. As anyone who has been through the loss of a child will know, it’s not that easy. I carried him for 17 weeks. 17 weeks. Please know I’m not trying to take away the pain of someone who has lost earlier in pregnancy, but 17 weeks is a long time. 17 weeks is “are you going to plan a funeral?” 17 weeks is “what will you do with his remains?” 17 weeks.
I caught myself wondering, earlier last week while in the shower, if Jacob and Harper will grow up resenting Cole. As I rationalized it early that morning, we’ll always recognize the day we lost him, October 17, and we’ll always recognize his due date, March 31. After all, he would have been our third March baby. Would they resent that we stopped, remembered, and how ever else we decide to recognize these days in the future? Then I snapped back to reality and realized it’s important for them to know why we’re sad. To know why there’s an urn on the sofa table. To know why there are only two of them. When I really thought about it, I realized they will get the recognition every day. Every new thing they do, every time they make us laugh: we’re there in the moment with them. The least we can do is recognize Cole twice a year.
So, we’ll get through this day. Because guess what? October is coming at the end of the year. And March will be here again next year. We have no choice but to make a conscious choice about how we will recognize these days. Of course I’ll try to keep myself so busy I can’t think about it (hello, large birthday for two kids). I even started working more with Photoshop again, trying to teach myself new things. It’s easy for me to lose myself for hours trying to learn something new. And that’s part of the reason I instituted Book Thursday. I need some time to just escape in a good book–so now everyone has to 😉
Thank you for the thoughts, cards, and wishes you have sent our way. This is a journey and we’re walking it the best we know how. And we couldn’t do that without you. Each of you is important to us and to our journey.
G Babies 