Pictures Lately

       Fruit bouquet 

 didn't last long and YUM!

                          Picture I took of my calendar. 

Baby #5 would have fit perfectly in the middle.

                                                          Bronwyn wanted a picture

             Mirren got the cutest smile on her face standing here all posed, 

and then I noticed, she had on her Sunday shoes 

aka her dancing shoes for this moment in time. :) 

 Dancing

 More dancing

 Most dancing

 Time to stop and smell the roses

 Judge me if you will, but when you stumble upon this cute bow that you made 

and Lochlan and his beautiful head of hair is right there, 

tempting you to see just how beautiful it would look on him if he was a girl, 

wouldn't YOU put it on him too? 

And look, it WOULD look so dang cute. 

But he's a boy. 

So I took it off. 

Ha ha.

 The many

 varied

 funny faces

of Lochlan

Mirren Funnies

"I have a tummy ache Mommy."

"You do?  Where?"

"In my mouth" 

as she opens wide and puts her hand in 

to point to where her molars are.

Searching

(Here is your warning: I may be writing about loss, sadness, grief, for a little while.
I'll consider it normal for me.  Please feel free to skip it
and maybe come back in a few weeks when I can start to step away from it.)

It has been an interesting week.

I've been gathering my littles close to me, 

wanting to create a nest of comfort and love and family togetherness 

as we've all dealt with the loss of our baby in varying degrees.

Each day has felt like a Monday. 

The day after I had my miscarriage ironically. 

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday felt like they never existed 

because my world couldn't move forward 

from the day after it felt like it crashed down.

I feel like I've been searching this week.

Searching for an answer, 

searching for my baby, 

searching for the solution 

that pieces me back together and helps me to feel whole again.

I clung to and worked myself sore and tired this week. 

Over a quilt that while in the woes of morning sickness 

and the lack of energy that accompanies it, 

I lamented that I had wanted to finish in time for Christmas. 

With a sure feeling in my heart that finishing this quilt 

would bring me closeness to my pregnancy and the baby I had carried, 

I finished it finally after hours and hours and hours of work.

 And do you know what I felt?!?  

Elation, happiness, wholeness?  

No. 

Emptiness.  

And I remembered, from my long ago days 

of newly grieving for my son who I placed for adoption, 

that nothing fills the hole that the unrequited love of a child leaves in your heart. 

It is only as you piece together your  life again, 

day by day, choice by choice, moment by moment, 

greeting every day with faith in your heart and courage in your step, 

to face each day with that familiar ache in your heart,

that life begins to move forward again. 

What I wouldn't pay for someone to go through that process for me

but I know that it is only through the hard moments 

in my future and in my present 

that Heavenly Father is refining me. 

That through this pain as I reach to Him in faith

that I will survive, recognizing that there is purpose to it. 

That when I look back many years from now

I will see the blessings waiting behind this trial 

and I will see the growth in myself 

as I've come through it.

And someday when I reunite with my baby,

 my aching arms will know that it was worth it.

Gone

Good news! My shingles are almost gone!

Bad news!  The reason I was getting so sick, probably, is also gone.

This past weekend, I miscarried my itty bitty baby. 

I was 13 weeks 5 days pregnant.

My water broke on Friday night. 

I rushed to the E.R.

No heartbeat. 

My heart stopped beating.

My head stopped working.

My body stopped feeling. 

My world is upside down.

Today my body started feeling again.

I started feeling that the whole thing just wasn't fair.

Other pregnant people only a few weeks ahead of me are finding out their baby's genders.

And I'm trying to make sense of such a big hurt in my life.

 I hate grieving.  I hate grief.

It takes patience. 

I will get through this. 

Just give me time.

Something Heavy

Tonight I find myself with something heavy on my heart and a need to just write. So here we go.

13 years ago, I placed my son for adoption. A son I love and loved. Very deeply. His birth father and I had made a go of being married but after a very short time, we gave up that dream. It just didn't work.

Fast forward 4 years, and I re-married. My husband now is an incredible man that I am grateful for, who taught me about love, loyalty and what being married is all about. Being committed for the long haul through all the hard stuff and the good stuff. Striving for eternity.

At the beginning of December, I found out that my 1st husband, my first son's birth dad, had died of cancer. It came as a complete shock and I felt so heartbroken for him and for my son who would never get to meet him in person in this life. My grief has surprised me. I always wanted my son and his birth father to have a relationship, to complete the picture in my head of my son knowing completely his background, what he came from. That picture cannot come to pass anymore, at least not the way I had imagined it.

Tonight I wrote a letter to my son's adoptive family, letting them know everything I knew about his birth dad so that I didn't have to carry the burden of holding all the contact info for birth dad's family and any other info that I needed to share. I shared some pictures that I had found while perusing social media, pictures of my ex-husband that brought my grief back to the surface. I don't understand this grief, or how heavy it feels right now.

I only know how very real it feels. And I can only imagine the sadness of his family. It is hard to lose someone that you care about and someone that you imagined a life with. I feels as if I've lost a part of myself.

Wellness, or So I Thought

Wellness was a wonderful relief, for about a week.

And then, I got this weird sore spot 

on the back of my neck for about 2 days.

On the 2nd day, I noticed a bump in the same area.

Odd, right?

Then I clued in to the fact that my shoulder was slightly aching 

and when I moved it, 

the muscles around  the joint seemed to hurt more than I would have expected

but, I surmised, I HAD been shoveling a lot of snow 

so maybe I was just out of shape. 

Even though I have been shoveling snow for weeks now.

But just in case, I looked at the skin on my shoulder. 

And saw this:

And then I made my daughter take a picture 

of the back of my neck where I had felt the bump. 

It looked like this:

Hmm. 

Weird red bumps. 

Do I have lice?

Nope.

But, with the bumps in little groups, after googling,

I figured out that I have SHINGLES!!

Yes, I have an old person disease. 

Except now I know that not only old people get shingles.

Healthy 35 year old women who have recently been through a lot of illnesses 

can also get shingles.

Luckily I had chicken pox as a child,

 so I will be fine as the antibodies I got from having chicken

pox will fight this current infection.

The current question I have:

 How do I keep from continuing to get sick?!? 

My current ideas: Getting lots of rest and taking my vitamins. 

Along with removing as much sugar from my diet as I possibly can.

Here's hoping I can kick this sickness and keep any other lurkers at bay.

At least for a while.

Dare I Say It?

I think we're well!  

2 days ago I had my last funky sore throat thing, and nothing since. 

Woot!! 

 Bronwyn also seems to be feeling well, 

and no new symptoms seem to be popping up 

so fingers crossed we'll be well for awhile. 

                                  Last Saturday Reed was feeling a little loopy. He decided, after being outside for awhile in insulated coveralls, that being buried in snow was a funny idea! So Bronwyn helped him and then came inside and asked me to find Daddy. I couldn't even see him! As soon as she pointed him out, I told him he was crazy and I was going to take a picture!

                What a goof! Later, after working outside a ton, he got really sick and spent the rest of the evening in bed shivering and sleeping. I think he actually got mild hypothermia. It took him forever to get warm!

For some reason the girls have been having fun eating while sitting on stools. So Lochlan climbed up on this stool and finished eating his food (on the plate) while straddling it. What a dork. I laughed at him and he was so proud of being a big boy like his sisters.