Friends

I'm still loving it. I have visited a few friends lately who have two or more children. Some of them have had a three month old and a three year old. It seems incredibly hard. You can look in their eyes and see that they just don't have the energy to discipline the three year old, and are half-zombies from lack of sleep. These same parents don't have children who nap. I can't imagine. Eli naps twice a day every day and usually one nap is at least 2 hours. I'm lucky. But I keep asking myself, when is the right time to try for another? I guess every child is different, but 2 or 3 sure seems like a tough age to bring in another baby. But I don't have that many child-bearing years left so...

Yesterday was the 7-month anniversary of my mom's death. That is hard to believe. It still seems very impossible that she's not here, and I still find myself thinking about calling her and then I remember that I can't. Today I visited a childhood friend from Cincinnati who happens to now live in Wilmington. She asked how my parents were. That was very hard. She said that her mom remembers my mom as a good friend. Who doesn't? I told her that I learned from my mom that you can never have too many friends.

I want to pass along a link to another blog that I have become addicted to. It's www.thespohrsaremultiplying.com. The author had a child prematurely and did not know whether she would survive at the beginning. The little girl, Madeline, was a fighter, and she did survive, but had to use oxygen occassionally at night. One day a few months ago, the one-and-a-half-year-old's breathing became more difficult and she passed away unexpectedly. The author, Heather, writes almost every day very honestly about her grief. Reading this blog, I somewhat identify with her grief and at the same time I am reminded of how lucky I am to have Eli and I am reminded to stay in the present with him.

I am so glad I decided not to work. Eli and I are having so much fun, and I don't feel like I'm missing anything anymore. And I have even had chances to do a bit of cleaning.