18 months

Saturday marked 18 months for Calli girl! She is just so much fun! She understands so much and is so quick to pick stuff up. We are going to the doctor on Friday for her checkup, so I will update with stats then. In the meantime here are some fun videos I took last week.

October is National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month

I was scrolling through Facebook during my lunch hour, eating my salad, none the wiser and then a Huffington Post Article caught my eye. I clicked on it and read it and started to cry.
I didn't know that this month was so significant. And I didn't know that today is National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day.
This article is really well written and I agree with a lot of it. I will talk about Luciana and but don't be surprised if I cry or if at times I won't talk about it. There are moments every day that I think about her and what it would be like to have two daughters. I don't know that I will ever forget. I don't know that I will ever stop grieving.
I write this all to give you some insight into dealing with someone who has dealt with or is dealing with loss. First; every person is different so don't think that because your aunt/cousin/sister-in-law or whomever went through this and dealt with it their way that everyone is the same. Second, try not to tell the story of your loss or your sister's/ cousin's/ aunt's or whomever loss until that person is ready. They may not ever be ready or they might want to sign up for a support group on day one. Listening is important.
The hardest part right now is that I want so much to enjoy and be present in every moment with my beautiful daughter but sometimes I get caught up in grief and I feel guilty. I shouldn't think about what could have been when I have been so incredibly blessed. But I also know that this is my story and someday I will get to tell Calliope about her sister angel that watches over us all.
Sending love and hugs out to you all.

Oh no...

So we were playing outside the other day and Calli decided to pour out an almost full bottle of bubbles. I missed her yelling "OH NO" by mere moments.

Sleep.... sleep... s l e e p... zzzzzzzz

So the good news is that Calli has the ability to sleep through the night. The problem is that she doesn't always do it. It really is the one thing that plagues me about this girl...
Well that and she does stuff for my daycare provider that she will not do for me... like eat pancakes and get pig tails.
This weekend she started with a runny nose and ended with a little cough... and so it begins.
Hope everyone had a great weekend. Here are some pics from this morning and yesterday.
xo
S

H E L P

I look to you friends for some advice. Sleep has become a little bit of an issue around here. Some days there is plenty but on some days it is only happening during the day.
For the longest time Calli was napping two times for about an hour each and going to sleep at 8:30 with a 5:30 wake up. Now she is napping sporadically, sometimes in the morning and afternoon, sometimes not all and everything in between. Our bedtime routine has become crazy... she used to nurse to sleep and go right down until the morning, and most of the time I was putting her in bed awake.
For the past couple of weeks she cries her head off for an hour or so til I nurse her again or take her out and either let her sleep with me or we have to keep taking her out and rubbing her back and singing until she falls asleep. On top of all that she wakes up every night between 3-4:30. I have a hard time letting her cry it out at that time because I have to work in the morning so I usually put her in bed with me where she either falls right back asleep or she bugs me until I take her downstairs and put on the Disney channel. That was this morning... I barely had 4 hours of sleep altogether.
UGH. I don't know what to do. She starts daycare back next week and hubby goes back to work and we will all be in a crazy schedule for the fall... I'm at a loss.
Tonight she was rubbing her eyes by 6:30 so she went to bed without the histrionics... we will see how long it lasts...
Advice.... please!

s

FRIDAY

Whoa this has been one l o n g week. Not a lot of sleep. Lots of worrying about Calli girl!! I am in N E E D of a weekend. Yup! TGIF big time. Hope you have a great one!!

Smooches!

xoxo
S

Maybe too much info...

Calliope has not been feeling well lately. So the other day when she fell asleep in the car on the way home I didn't want to cut her nap short so I started driving around. Being in Hartford I decided to drive to the cemetery. My daughter is buried with my dad. I find a lot of comfort in that especially because it was a hard fought battle to get that to happen.

DISCLAIMER!!! Here is the story. So stop reading if you don't want to know...

After I delivered Luciana there were so many decisions that needed to be made right away and one of them was where we would send her body. I never in a million years thought about this and it was really hard to even contemplate. Lucky for us we were surrounded by family and they helped us do the research to decide which was the best funeral home to deal with this situation. The next decision was where would we want her to rest for always. Again, not a detail that we were thinking of having to deal with. Hubby was adamant that we didn't cremate and although I also didn't want to do that we didn't know where to bury her. My father is buried in Hartford and there are three plots there with him but we didn't want to use a whole plot for her.
My mother in law was the main contact with the funeral home for all these issues. For a while we thought we could bury her in the same plot as my father but it turned out that he wasn't buried deep enough. It was fate that my mother in law mentioned to the funeral director our names because it turned out that we went to college together and she remembered us. She worked with the cemetery to figure it out. There used to be two trees that flanked my father's grave stone, now there is one and my daughter....
So when I drove to the cemetery the other day with Calli snoozing, I jumped out real quick to say hi and as I got closer I saw that one single weed was growing out of the spot where Luciana is laid to rest and it is the most beautiful weed in the universe. My favorite flowers are daisies, so the fact that these kinda look like daisies really made me a smile... and at a time when I needed a smile.

Not sure why I decided to share this story with you today but I came across the pictures on my phone and felt the need to share.

xo
S