I will readily admit that this weekend has been rough for me, emotionally. Maybe since when we originally made our plans for the weekend, I was expecting to be 6 months pregnant and wondered at the time if I’d have the energy. Maybe because Pregnancy & Infant Loss Remembrance Day was just a few days ago and I had been sent to the edge. Maybe because yesterday the kids came running into the room in the morning, and Quentin was asking if his birthday was “next” (in March). I told him yes, it was next, to which Theo interjected “Well, the next birthday would have been our baby, in January.” So amid the well wishes from friends and family, I have found myself on the verge of being broken down all weekend. I thought those words in my head yesterday: “I am broken.” But then I thought no – I did break, past tense. I’m like a vase that fell and cracked. Now I’ve been glued back together, but if you look carefully, you can still see the crack, so I can never be the same.

Nevertheless, we have kept busy (aka, distracted). We bought tickets to Blue Man Group, and the kids loved it. Ger and I saw the show, in Chicago, probably a dozen years ago. The looks on the faces of the kids were priceless. Theo was so excited that he fell out of his seat. Our seats were in the middle of the theater, and at one point, the Blue Men climb over the chairs in the audience and passed right through our family. Squeals from the kids. At another point, there is a “party” and one of the Blue Men was standing right next to us (we were on the aisle) dancing.

We had bookends to that activity with lunch on the way to Chicago, and breakfast at my favorite place this morning. The rest of today is spent getting ready for winter around our house. Even though it will likely be awhile before we have very cold weather and snow, the appearance of a hard frost overnight was enough to kick us into gear. We still had our old dining table and chairs in our garage, preventing Ger from parking inside. I gathered them up and dropped them off at a donation center. I took Quentin to Target to stock up on appropriately-sized hats and mittens. Ger took the pump out of our waterfall to store for winter, and I skimmed the water for leaves. We will be hanging the net over the pond this afternoon and it will stay there until a majority of the leaves have fallen. Ger went to get another wire to hang the net, so I sat outside with the kids. Weather was perfect, though my mood far from matched it. At least I am comfortable with my grief; I don’t try to fight it when it hits me.