February 12-18

January 29-February 4

 

 

January 8, and a note

Before continuing, I want to make a note about the blog. I started this as a fun and easy way to share some of our daily happenings with far-away friends and family, and I also got into P365 photos and scrapping. Daily ANYTHING is hard to keep up with…and even though watching us it may seem like our daily lives haven’t changed much, life has been completely altered. I started keeping an online journal so I could keep record of my grieving, and I’m so glad I did. At the same, I took far fewer pictures than any time since Aaron was born. Part of this is related to just feeling quiet and thoughtful and somewhat withdrawn, and part of it is related to how nice it feels to set down the camera sometimes and just experience something. In the past, I have made posts to reckon for every day of the year, noting the days when I had no photos. That has started to feel a bit silly to me, so I’m just going to post pictures for the days that I have them. You will see lots of huge gaps. But I would rather post what I have than stop this completely, and now that I’ve gotten over the hurdle of yesterday’s post, I’m excited to move forward with it.

*Much content from the months January-June is drawn from the journal I kept during that time and so truly reflects how I was feeling at those times.

 

I noticed today and yesterday how Aaron seems to have grown up so much in the past week or so. Maybe just a trick of the eyes or a trick of the heart, more likely, but it seems awfully noticeable to me. Just when babyhood is something I want the most, Aaron seems to be getting further away from it.

I sent out an email to the family today telling them about our morning in the mountains, and offering to send pictures to those who wanted to see them. I heard back from from everybody very quickly and I sent pictures out to everybody. It means so so much to me that my family is so willing to accept Mara as a part of their lives even though she’s not here. Auntie Kathy even said she was going to print the pictures of Mara and scrap them and I was so so happy to hear that. I think it will be a while before I can scrap the pictures of Mara herself, but I hope to be able to soon.

Elsewhere in the household, Ashley did a lot of moving to her new place today, with the help of everyone in the house. I am also looking forward to Aaron going back to school tomorrow. Taking him will be hard, and I know I will miss him sorely in my fragile state, but I know it's the next step that we all need.

December 25-A Merry Christmas Day

Santa came!!

and so did the grandparents!!

We’ve got lotsa pictures to share from today!

seeing the evidence!

oh my! Santa’s pockets were so full of reindeer food that he dropped some on our floor. AGAIN!

The milk is gone Mommy!!

yes, that is a yardstick!

Demonstrating how this gift will be used…

Being a pirate and modeling his shark tooth necklace! Doesn’t he look like such a big boy here?!?!?!?

These were Aaron’s big Christmas wish, the Imaginext dinosaurs, which Aaron calls, “Dinosaurs in Gear.” He has been asking for these for the whole year.

oooh, cute new coat!

ARRRGGHH!!! An AWESOME pirate ship from NanaGrampy…

…which I will spend an hour putting together.

 

Can you see through the glare? My son SAW and CHOSE this gift for his Mommy all by himself…LOTR Pez dispensers!!

Somewhere between watching Aaron open gifts and sitting down to Christmas dinner, I realized I was truly having a nice day. I took nowhere NEAR the number of photos I usually take, which is a marker of how slow and reserved I was feeling. There were some lovely times of the day that I don’t have photos of at all, like when Sarah and Zack and the girls were over. I know that I didn’t feel it as deeply and joyfully as I usually do, but sometime during the day I noticed that I was actually enjoying myself. It was as if every desperate plea we made for this pain to ease was finally answered. It felt like the burden had been lifted, and while I knew that feeling was going to come and go, just knowing that it was possible was empowering, and it was an unbelievable relief. Just a little mercy and grace for us. We were given one precious day. I imagined that all the love and good wishes and words of support from people who had reached out to us had woven a net that lifted our pain from off of us and held it for us for a while. It really worked. We managed to have a good Christmas after all, to focus on Aaron, and to enjoy things as much as someone possibly could after going through what we have.

When we made it upstairs for the night, I expressed these thoughts to Chris, and wondered if he had thought about the day the same way. He said that the same thought had crossed his mind earlier in the day and he felt guilty for a moment, even thinking, “Wait, I shouldn’t be laughing! Why am I enjoying myself?”  I think this kind of thing is pretty common during grieving. It’s so so hard to reconcile all the different feelings that course through us, so quickly and unpredictably, and leaving so much raw damage. I would later experience that instant of griever’s guilt on the one month mark of when Mara died. But we snap out of it, sometimes at least, and we let ourselves feel good again. And the moments when we feel good will come more and more and we will learn how to live with this loss.

Merry Christmas.

October 31

It’s Halloween!!! On a MONDAY.

Look…it’s Rachel Berry and a Brave Knight!

Now Aaron REALLY wanted to pass out candy, like WAY more than he wanted to go trick-or-treating. While we were taking these pictures, about 10 kids came to our house, the first of which was a brother and sister that go to his school. He was beside himself with excitement as he saw them coming up the stairs. So we kept the trick-or-treating early and short so he could come home and pass out candy some more.

Sadly, even though we were out for less than an hour, once we got back home, NOT ONE person came to our door. Aaron was so so sad and just cried. He sat by our front door with the bowl of candy, and got more and more sad until finally he just laid down on the floor and cried. His little self broke my heart. I felt so bad for him (but took a picture of it anyway).

I also took this awesome shot of my boy…he is so handsome, just look at that face!

and a little candy silliness…yes, we had ALL of that left. Light action on a Monday I guess!

Oh man…a day of school and then trick-or-treating was just TOO much for me. I was definitely hurting the next day.

September 16

Tonight was Aaron’s back to school night, and I just could NOT wait. I wish it wasn’t on a Friday night, but what can you do. Last year, we missed his first back to school night of his whole life, because we got home on Friday and just forgot all about it. I was SO upset with myself and that sure isn’t going to happen again! Here’s a look around his Junior Kindergarten classroom.

Aaron’s having a cookie…and I look as tired as I feel. It’s Friday at 7pm…I should already be asleep with my feet up!

and this is a tribute to my sister…look what Aaron said.

Ashley read to Aaron for a bit…we loved the look on his face.

September 12

Well, Chris and I have decided to go out for my birthday dinner a day early because we are making it a dinner date and Ashley is available to watch Aaron this evening. We took this opportunity to take some pictures while we were all looking nice.

We had a REALLY lovely evening. Ash and Aaron had dinner and a movie, and Chris and I went to Macaroni Grill. They have a new menu and our food was DEEEEELICIOUS! Then we did the grocery shopping on the way home (it is Monday, after all…) and got home in time to put Aaron to bed.

September 6

Well, it’s our first day of school! Today at Edison all the teachers are wearing our Edison t-shirts, which is definitely a big change for us, but turned out to be pretty fun. We also looked cute with our boy for morning pictures. Unfortunately it is dark when we leave in the morning so there was no cute photo on the front steps to be had.

But we did get some fun and silly shots on the couch.

and after school when Ash got home, we got some more shots!

And then Aaron took some pictures of me and Ash together. He did a great job!

He posed us for some other shots, which was CRACKING us up!!

“How about you guys look at each other and talk to each other on phones with your hands?”

“Okay now Ash you be a lion and Mommy you be a zebra.” (how does one “be” a zebra???")

“Okay now hold these Lego knights.”

and now some with Chris…

and for an afterschool activity today…Aaron wanted to play some games :) Here we are in his playroom.