Just Checking In

Well, I've still got the sniffles and I haven't had a decent night's sleep in, oh, three days? But I wanted to check in with my online comrades and let you know that, yes, I am still here.

It was a nice weekend. My older son didn't have school on Friday because we got some icy, snowy mix in the A.M. and there was a delay to the start of school. Since he only goes to school in the morning, well - snow day! We took advantage of the time off by making it a "pajama day" where we don't change out of our jammies all day. It was low key and I was feeling rotten, but we still managed to do our Dr. Seuss reading. When I asked if my boys wanted to read "The Cat in the Hat" they were all over it. My younger son picked "Green Eggs and Ham" while my older son offered up the suggestion that we climb into my bed, pull up the covers and read there. Great idea.

We read our books, we cuddled and my older son made me grin from ear-to-ear as he often does: "Mommy? I love books. They teach us about everything!" Just another example I can look to when I'm feeling unsure that I'm doing anything right with these two precious lives.

My need to imprint our reading time was especially important to me that day because I had just read this extremely sad post I had stumbled upon at one of the mommy blogs I read. This mother had been blogging through the nine months of her pregnancy, posted a notice when it was time for her to go to the hospital two weeks after her due date, posted a short entry about Walker's birth and then wrote a final entry about the death of her newborn just five days after his birth.

When I read it I was almost moved to tears. I'm more of a visual person when it comes to crying, but this one almost changed all of that. The other thing that kept me from crying, I think, was the strength and vision of this grieving mother. She wrote about all these blessings that she was able to find during those heartbreaking five days and yet her devastation is palpable. I'm sure she isn't as together all the time as she was in this particular moment - I mean, I don't think I could get myself out of bed ... I don't even want to think about it.

So when I was reading with my boys I was sure to give them an extra big hug; to look deep into those twinkling blue and chocolate brown eyes that so obviously hide so much; I let my heart ache for a few moments as I fought the urge to scoop them both up in my arms and hold them until, well, until the world couldn't hurt them - EVER.

Although I've thought of baby Walker from time to time over the last few days, our lives haven't really changed. I've tried to treasure my moments with my children just a little more, but I know that months or weeks or even days from now I'll snap at one of my boys for being too loud or for hitting his brother or I'll forget to just stop during my busy day and just be with them.

For little Walker's mom, well, she'll never forget her little guy because he'll always be with her in his absence. Why is it that it takes something so sad to make me remember how lucky I am?