October 15, 2014

For all the parents missing their children and for all the babies who are missed...

... and especially my boy, Reid.

Bad mommy

C.S. fell this evening and knocked out one of her front teeth. She is doing fine so far and was amazingly calm and cooperative once we got past the initial bleeding and shock. The dentist thought she would heal up jut fine but we are waiting for an appointment with a paediatric specialist. I however am devastated. I know she hasn't been disabled or become seriously ill, but I feel like I've broken my baby, my rainbow baby, my "second" chance. My beautiful little girl has been changed in an instant and every time I see the difference in her I feel horrible for not protecting her better. 

And just to make the evening more fun, my check engine light came on while I was driving C.S. to the dentist and now have to find a way to get it in to the shop before the holiday weekend starts. I also need to find a way to get around without my vehicle and it's started snowing again so walking isn't a great option. 

Did I mention that I really don't like Easter?

4, the day

Reid's birthday in pictures...

These actually arrived before the 3rd, via a trip to the grocery store. Hopefully I will get to have red daisies for the whole month of April.

We had our traditional cupcakes for breakfast. This year, we had vanilla-chocolate-chip-cookie cupcakes with chocolate icing (and Spiderman cupcake papers).

We sang happy birthday and blew out the candles.

We had a day out together that didn't go quite as planned but we were together and that is what counts.

I really wanted to take lots of pictures in our super hero t-shirts but C.S. was not feeling co-operative.

Luckily the promise of chocolate (she is so mommy's girl) and some guidance from big sister turned the photo shoot around.

Happy Birthday Reid. I hope where ever you are, you are rocking the amazing superhero costume that I wish I could have made for you.

4 is hard

4 is hard. It's not the unending agony and sadness of 1, but it's still hard. At 4, you have you traditions established and you actually start to enjoy the day, but the days around it are still painful and grey. At 4, you still feel angry with the universe for the birthday boy not being here and with all the people who either forgot to or didn't bother to acknowledge that someone in our family should be 4. At 4, you have the ability to keep the veneer of "normal" in place most of the time, but some times it feels like underneath the veneer you are just as broken as you ever were.

Daffodils

The wonderful Merry asked her on-line (and IRL) friends to join her in making daffodil crafts to mark what should be Freddie' 4th birthday on April 2nd. I decided on crochet daffodils and went looking on Ravelry for patterns. The first one can be found here on Attic24. It's a cute pattern but it didn't come out perfectly for me. I lay all the blame on the cotton yarn I used because it's a nice pattern and I really liked that it was all worked together and I didn't have to sew in a dozen ends.

For the second pattern which I found here, I switched to acrylic yarn and although the colour isn't perfect, I love the results. All the parts are sewn separately which was less than ideal, but I love the shape of the petals.

I must admit to completely cheating for the pictures. I pinned the daffodils to the sofa and draped the green yarn down to be the stems because I lack the ambition to figure out how to make proper stems. 

Happy Birthday sweet Freddie. I promise to take some pictures for your mum when the daffodils here bloom in May.

 

Still here

Hello....is anyone out there? I'm still here and I still want to write but I seem to have lost the ability to express myself. From the outside I look like a functioning human being, but on the inside I feel like a complete disaster.

Next week will be 4 years since Reid died. I always thought that by the 4 year mark I'd be some kind of better or normal or okay.

I officially give up

I kept telling myself that I was going to finish the year for the 52 weeks of happiness posts, but I've realized that it's not going to happen. And really making myself do things should be reserved for folding laundry and cleaning bathrooms, not my "spare" time.

I feel like Christmas is this big hulking blob that's closing in on me, yet again. I'm not sobbing in the corner every night, but I still would skip it all if I could. And I'm pretty sure that this is as good as it's ever going to be.

It's November and after that is December...

I decided to run the Remembering Together Ornament Swap again this year. If you are interested in making a Holiday ornament for a fellow bereaved parent, please check out the swap blog for information.

52 Weeks: Week 44

Halloween with kids means lots of pictures and lots of happiness. Except when you say, "no more candy", then the happiness evapourates.

We did the fastest pumpkin carving we have ever done this year. We let D design the jack o' laterns and it went fast. Normally D.G. does a couple of elaborate designs that take 3 hours each to complete. C.S. wasn't interested in touching the gooey stuff at all. She stuck with colouring the newspaper we put down to contain the mess.

Here are the finished pumpkins with our lion. I was very happy that C.S. decided to like being a lion so that I didn't have to come up with a costume for her. She really got into roaring.

I am super proud of D's Winnie the Witch costume. All the clothes were upcycled from thrift shop purchases, except the cardigan which didn't have to be altered. The stripy leggings turned out perfectly. (Thank you crafty mommy blogger types!) The materials for the hat cost as much as the rest of the outfit combined, but it came out great and had a built-in wig. No the best picture of her, but it's the best picture for showing her whole costume.

I think the hat will get a lot of use in the future. The hat is almost as tall as our "Mini Winnie". She wore it to hand out candy with D.G. while I took D out trick or treating.

The last  bit of happiness is horribly cliched for a SAHM, but I bought a new vacuum this weekend and I love it!

52 Weeks: Week 43

Week 43 was spent trying to finish D's Halloween costume so there aren't many pictures that aren't more appropriate for Week 44.  I am happy that I got it finished in plenty of time and that no major disasters happened after it was ready. (I was put on bedrest with C.S. the day after I finished D's Tinkerbell costume 2 years ago.)

I am really happy that we have playgroups to go to in our neighborhood.  I lost touch with most of my mom friends that I met with D was a baby because they all had their 2nd babies around the same time that Reid died. That also means that they don't have kids the same age as C.S. so I need playgroups so that the poor girl can see kids her own age once in a while. Of course she may just spend part of the time at playgroup hiding, but that's alright too.

I was also happy that we got a nice outside day that Saturday to spend outside. All the yard work got done before it snowed on Sunday and the girls spent an hour and a half in the leaf pile.

52 Weeks: Week 42

Week 42 meant an extra day off from school and a road trip for my niece's baptism. All done with a nasty head cold so I again did not take enough pictures and the ones I did take feature people who have not consented to be displayed here. However, I got the proofs from our family photo shoot back so I can fill the space with these.

52 Weeks: Week 41

Things that made me happy in Week 41:

I made and canned a small batch of homemade salsa using garden tomatoes (mine and my neighbors combined). I neglected to take a picture of the finished product before I put most of it away but it is both pretty and tasty, although not spicy as I am a wimp when it comes to spicy food.

I baked a fabulous caramel apple pie for Thanksgiving dinner with my parents. (Again using apples from my neighbor). Both making it and eating it made me happy.

D.G. tried to get some fall yard work done, but ended up mostly providing entertainment for the girls. They loved the pile of leaves so he just kept raking it back up for them.

And since I can't have my son here for Thanksgiving, I'm going to at least have his flowers with me.

52 Weeks: Week 40

I don't know exactly what happened during Week 40. C.S. was sick and had the yucky rivers of snot thing going on for 4 days. The only pictures I took all week were selfies for trying to determine what to wear for our annual family photo shoot and a few featuring a very naked C.S. that I don't want to share in order to save my future relationship with her. We did do the family photos, so there will be pictures from that eventually.

(Just remembered that trying to figure out what to wear for the pictures ate up most of that week. I hate trying to be my own stylist and should have turned it over my blog readers like Angela does.)

D.G. and I also celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary that week. We even went out for a proper date and had a lovely meal where no one threw food on the floor or needed us to cut their meat. 

The Wave

Love and light to all of you tonight as we remember and honor our children with candles and thoughts and wishes. 



This is my fourth October 15th and I wasn't expecting it to be this emotional. Watching all the pictures come up on Insta.gram today was both beautiful and horribly sad. 


I've become a little obsessed with watching the sparkles float in the candle. They're like little stars and don't our babies deserve some stars too?

52 Weeks: Week 39

I'm going to get caught up on this tonight, no matter what. (D.G. is out playing hockey and I don't feel like watching TV.)

After 8 years off the ice, I finally started curling again this week. I met my new team and practiced twice. I can't wait for my first game next week.

I also got a new toy important kitchen tool this week. Shiny and pretty and reduces a bag of carrots to shreds in two minutes.

I was having so much fun with the new food processor, I finally got the baking done I've been putting off for weeks. (I guess it's my weekend to catch up on all the things I've been putting off.) 8 dozen muffins and one batch of cookies later, I've had enough baking.
 

And the big news here is that we are starting potty training. This makes me happy for so many reasons, but it's at least partly because potty pictures are cute.

52 Weeks: Week 38

I got an early start on D's Halloween costume this year and turned a $3 men's XL t-shirt into a dress. I probably broke every sewing rule I'd ever been taught, but it fits and D gave it her stamp of approval.

C.S. and I spied this on the curb on the walk home from school one day this week. We went back after supper and collected it. D.G. has been busy refinishing it and hopefully soon it will be D's first desk. I think it's adorable but it also made me happy because according to D.G. "dumpster diving" for furniture had finally pushed over the line to hippy-dom. I thought the cloth diapers, breast feeding and hanging my laundry outside had done that already but I guess not.

Bailey's milkshake = happiness. That is all.

This week ended with our local Walk to Remember. (They moved it into September this year, not sure why but it meant we could wear summer clothes.) This is the 4th Walk we've done since Reid died but I think this is the first family picture we've taken. I'm happy there is a place when you don't have to feel odd about taking a picture with a name on a sidewalk and feeling good that your whole family is represented in the picture,

52 Weeks: Week 37

I'm trying to remember back to Week 37. This is why I shouldn't procrastinate quite so much when it comes to blogging. Good thing I at least picked out some pictures right at the end of that week.

I still love hanging laundry outside. We are quickly running out of days when it's warm enough to completely dry a load but a sunny day in mid-September when C.S. and I can be outside doing laundry is wonderful.

This was the week when we discovered that C.S. does have enough hair for "tails". So stinkin' cute.
 

The reason we discovered that she could have tails was gymnastics. (I put my hair in 2 pony tails to keep it out of my face and she wanted her own set too.) Now that D is in school for full days, I needed some activities for C.S. I decided we would try a parented gymnastics class first. It was a good decision, she is so happy there. "I go on tramp-O-line!"

The love of trampolines may be genetic as we got to see how much my niece loves it too when they came for a visit. Can't get in trouble for posting this as she is a bouncy blur. She and D and C.S. played dress up and I got some baby cuddles with my baby niece O.

52 Weeks: Week 36

So I was caught up for all of 2 days, then I was exhausted again and let things slide. If it hasn't been yelling at me, it hasn't been getting any attention the last 2 weeks.

Week 36 featured my big girl starting the first grade, my baby girl missing her big sister and me giving way to much money to dental professionals.

D started Grade 1 the first Tuesday in September.  So far she loves it other than the major reduction in Lego time that school causes.  Poor kiddo couldn't give us a decent smile though. She took a header of a bunk bed while we were on vacation and it hurt to smile. (It also resulted in 2 trips to the dentist to make sure that her permanent tooth was going to stay permanent.)

C.S. spent Week 36 waiting for her big sister to come home from "cool" and refusing to wear her hat forwards.

See, hat is still backwards. To fill some time while D was a school I took C.S. to watch the start of a cycling race that was happening a 15 minute walk from our house. Somewhere in that group of cyclists is the reigning Tour de France champion so it was a pretty big deal. Of course, C.S. was mostly in love with the teams' support motorcycles so she barely noticed the very fit men in tight shorts the cyclists.

Friday, I spent the day doing something for Reid. I volunteered at the fundrasing golf tournament hosted by my support group. It was a lovely day and a lot of money was raised to help families whose babies have died. I would have much rather been celebrating his first day of pre-school or had D posing with him instead of trees planted for him, but I'll take what I can get.