Second Snow of the Winter

Unbelievably, Charlotte experienced snow a second weekend in a row! Thankfully, it melted in time for Joseph's rescheduled birthday party. However, the much heavier snow anticipated in the Northeast and my being very sick (but only for one day) caused us to cancel our trip to the March for Life in D.C. Maybe next year!

Joseph's celebrated his birthday a week after his original plan. Joseph and his daddy had spent three days painstakingly building two Very Cool Rockets, and setting them off was the highlight of the party.

January 25 was the one-year anniversary of my getting to hold little Thomas in my arms after 69 days of being unable to hold him safely in the hospital. I meditated that if I feel touched out or exhausted, let me remember what it means to have the closeness with one's children taken away.

January 26 was another momentous anniversary: I baked (high-protein, low-sugar) cookies with Thomas, on a day I note is the one-year anniversary of when Thomas was finally cleared by his surgical team to consume clear liquids after being NPO (nothing by mouth) for seventy long days in the hospital. As I eat whatever I want, and too much of it also, I reflect on how formative an experience it was for such a young child to be NPO for so long and how spoiled most of us (read: me) are in comparison.

Miscellaneous Moments

Nicky (16 weeks) took his first trip to a pet store today, where the ‘bright lights of the big city’ had him shaking like a leaf in my arms the entire time. However, he came away with his first cozy stuffed animal—a turtle—which seems like it may have been worth it. And, yes, now we (okay, I) have become those people who buy stuffed animals for dogs.

On Thursday, I went to the children's hybrid homeschool to watch the much anticipated Civil War Debate. John (9th grade) got to watch it last year and was so impassioned about it, that he began studying for it in his free time five months ago. I greatly enjoyed getting to watch him be a debater this year! While out and about, the two youngest boys and I stopped by a grocery store. As I posed on Facebook:

To the kind, grey-haired lady at the Harris Teeter who approached me with my boys to offer to take a picture of us: Thank you! You could not have known that this was one of the only times my six-year-old has been inside a grocery store in a year and a half. You could not have known that all he and his four-year-old brother wanted today was to find a race car cart with two steering wheels, which they did! You could not know that I couldn't take him to the store during his four months of chemotherapy. You could not have known he lived in the hospital for 132 days suffering severe complications. You could not have known that for his last ten months at home, his health complications ("collateral damage") have kept him fairly close to home. Maybe all you knew was that my two little boys and I were glowing with joy to get to go to the grocery store and drive a race car cart because we were out of butter, and so you offered to take a picture of us. Thank you for preserving that moment.

Onward and upward from the Civil War Debate, that very night I hosted our first practice for the Catholic Quiz Bowl, upcoming in a couple of months. Also in preparations are the Broadway Revue (singing performance) and Federation competition (piano) . . . and maybe the high school Science Fair also!

Wedding Anniversary

Lastly in time, but not least in importance, our sixteenth wedding anniversary was on Friday. It actually snuck up on us because our lives are very busy now as still-fairly-new Special Needs Parents without a nanny anymore. The thought of us both going out on a date, especially at night, is still not even on the table. So, we went to the 7:00 a.m. Mass being said for our intentions--and that did involve leaving Thomas at home with siblings to babysit for one hour. Let's just summarize and say Thomas did not like that one bit, not even one teeny bit.

Chris gifted me the beautiful Summa Domestica by Leila Lawler. I gifted him nothing except my hard work for the family and mostly single mindedness on domestic affairs, and, being the very patient husband that he is, he accepted that as enough.