Thinking of Blue Day

After much debate in our house, it has been decided that Blue gets two birthdays. We will celebrate with a cake on January 11th, the day he was actually born. But today, June 19th, his expected arrival date will be celebrated also. It is on my calendar as Thinking of Blue Day.

You want to know what is awesome? We aren't the only ones with him on our calendar!! I got this wonderful email the other day:

Hi Heidi,

I only know you via blogs- but I sent you a little notice last year that June 19th happens to be my birthday (this year 42- ouch). I wanted to let you know Blueberry will be celebrated again with my birthday if it is ok with you. I feel we fellow Geminis (Here and in the afterlife gotta look out for one another). I know what it is like to loose a child and hope my remembrance of Blue is ok with you and you I know it is out of thinking it would have helped me a little.

I'll be thinking of you all -

Laura

Happy Birthday to you Laura!! Thank you for making our Blue a part of your life too!!

And over at the Lost and Found and Connections Abound they have a Loss Remembrances section. I had struggled in my head over if I should put an announcement over there or not. See I am the Clicker for the GLBT section of the blogs, and I haven't been doing a very good job. Imagine my surprise when reading the L&F the other day that the decision had been made for me:

LOSS REMEMBRANCES (send in the dates of loss anniversaries and I will post them on the correct day)

• Thinking Miracles will be remembering their unfulfilled due date this Friday. Please go over and give them support.

We miss him. I spent the car ride to work the other morning thinking of all the wonderful things that should be going on now. We should be getting ready to watch this amazing little boy smash into a birthday cake. We should be crying with joy as he takes his first steps.

So many things we have and will miss with our precious son. Our son. He was to be ours to hold. Ours to show off. Ours to kiss booboos and take places and dress in cute little outfits. At Babies R (Not For) Us the other day they had a whole bunch of cute boys outfits that were totally my style. I could totally see Jenn and I dressing Blue in them. Plaids and Skulls and just fun boy stuff. It is amazing. Before I was pregnant with him I had hoped and prayed for girls, I know what to do with girls. But once I was pregnant, and quickly knew that Blue was a boy, I wouldn't have traded our little boy for the world!! I often worry that he felt he wasn't wanted. Like he heard me saying that I only want girls. I hope he knows I love him more because he is a boy.

We miss you Blue. We will never stop. Your teddy bear goes with us everywhere. His are the hands we hold when we wish so badly to hold yours. We love you so much. From the first moment we laid our eyes on you and your happy dancing:

Until the moment we meet again. You will always be our firstborn son. Your mommies love you Blue. Don't you ever forget that.

Avery's Tap Recital

Friday, May 29--Avery's Tap Recital

I love me some little girls all dressed up in the cutest of outfits dancing!!!!! It seriously touches me. They are all cute and happy and confused. They were all doing different routines, or watching each other to see what the others were doing..

I also enjoyed the older girls. My favorite dance of theirs was the en pointe (is that how you spell it?) :


But the best little dancer of them all was our Avery. They danced to "You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile":


Grand Finale:


Lyz "coaching" Avery in her dance steps:

Other cute pictures from the day (See, we got there two hours early to reserve our front row seats!):

Seeing her name in the program:




And of course, a slice of Blueberry Pie, because Blue goes everywhere with us...

Hoppy Easter!

I may have mentioned before that I believe that Easter is the worst of the childless holidays*. At least with Christmas there are still presents, Halloween you can still dress up and pass out candy. That Thursday in November...there is still yummy food.

But Easter? Two adults would look a little silly hiding eggs in the backyard for each other to find. We weren't invited over to anyone's egg dying parties this year**, so no reason to dye eggs (poor Minne, she loves her a good hard boiled egg.)

This would have been Blue's first Easter. It is such a beautiful day out. There are just a few cute little fluffy clouds in the bright blue sky, making it look like it is painted. We would have had so much fun hiding a few eggs for him to crawl around and find. His Easter basket would have been filled with peanut butter eggs and Cadbury creme eggs for Jenn and I. Oh, and lots of nasty black licorice flavored jelly beans for Jenn too. Maybe Blue would have liked black licorice flavor? (gag)

So, instead of moping over what we are missing***, we decided to enjoy the day! Okay, I'm lying. We weren't going to do anything special today but take a nap and make pizza for dinner. Then Joni came along and said Nope! You shall come over and we shall spend time together. For some odd reason she really hates it when Jenn and I don't celebrate holidays. She just won't let us stay home and mope.

So, we decided to bring dessert. The message board I belong to, and seemingly the rest of the internet, have been hailing the all wonderful and beautiful rainbow cake. Most people are making a loverly diet version of it. Not us. We made our own version. And yes, of course we took pictures!!!

Making the white cake batter:

Dividing the batter into six bowls:

Mixing in the colors:

Rainbow of batter:

(Like our new countertops?)
Layering the batter:

Pans of layered cake:

Hey, we aren't always perfect:

Finished product:

Looking after it was sliced:

A yummy slice!


We also watched Avery have a little Easter Egg Hunt, the bunny hid one on our car:


And then Joni had a special Easter Egg Hunt for the adults! She hid eggs in very difficult places...under the shed, in the wood pile, in the garbage can, in the sewer pipe, and over the other side of the fence:

Each of the eggs was two colors and Joni had a prize list for the different eggs, it was kinda like bingo. Anyone have a Pink and Yellow Egg? Bingo!!:

And then the prizes were handed out. Avery and Jenn modeling our rewards:

Joni hid them so well, that there are still five more hidden somewhere in the Landii yard!

What started off as a day at work with me crying because I miss my son so much, ended as a wonderful day spent with people we love, smiling, laughing and snuggling:


*Yes, I know that "the real reason for Easter is to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Sorry, the religious aspect isn't important to me right now as God and I aren't exactly on speaking terms.

**This is not meant to be a guilt trip towards those that could have invited us to their egg dying parties. I am just stating a fact, I am not offended at not being invited. My massive whining about the holiday is what most likely made you not invite me to your party so it is my own fault not yours!!

***Ha! Don't be fooled, we are still moping!

Pittsburgh Trip-The Pittsburgh Zoo

You will be so proud!! There are pictures of me!!

Yeah! The zoooooo!! Avery was so excited. When she woke up she turned to Joni and asked "Are we still in Pittsburgh?" It was so much fun to watch her.

Lyz, Delaney and I:


Avery and I dancing to the California Sea Lion song:


Chris making out with the California Sea Lion:


Jenn seeing how far she can jump:


Avery and her adopted camel!!!:


Jenn and a polar bear (Jenn's second favorite, after penguins):


We were quite the caravan:


Even more sea lion:


After the zoo we went to Quaker Steak and Lube for dinner...it was yummy!!
Here we are at dinner:


Then we went shopping at Ikea. Chris was bored by it so him and Delaney took a nap in one of the sales areas:


After all the shopping we hung out in our room watching the final game of the NCAA basketball tournament. My team lost, which means that I lost some money, but it was still fun!!!

Then we went to bed. For a very long night for all. I had a rough Blue night. How would things have been different if he had been with us. Would he have liked all the animals? Would he have smiled and giggled and kicked his feet and loved every minute of it? Would we have had the look in our eyes that Lyz and Chris had watching Avery take it all in? That look of pride that you could show your children things they want to see and love?

This was followed by a lot of physical pain, I have no idea what it was all from. Since I was already in a crying jag from the Blue pain, I spent four hours crying about the physical pain. Once Jenn finally got me calmed down (and drugged) I started to relax, but then my phone rang. Here poor Avery was having a rough night too. She was vomiting and they wanted to know if we had a spare Sprite for her. Poor thing.

Thankfully both of us woke up happier the next morning :)

Happy 1st Birthday Blue!!

Last night your momma and I laid in bed looking at all of your things. The cards from all the flowers, your first Christmas card, the cards that were sent in the mail, all of your ultrasound pictures, and your blanket while your bear sat in our laps.

Today we will blow out the candle on your cake. I hope that you are looking down on us, could you send a flicker in the candle to let us know you are there? We will sing happy birthday to you, we are sorry if we cry.

Here is your cake:


Your presents have been given to children who need then more than you right now, we hope you don't mind.

We've missed you for this past year. We know you are here in our hearts, but we sure wish you were here in our home.

Love you,
Mommy

I've been buttering you all up...

did you notice?

See, I've posted funny things this week because I knew what this weekend was going to bring. I am trying to stay positive and be happy, but it isn't working as well as I had hoped.

Today is the last day that I will be able to say "A year ago I was pregnant with Blue." Really, I can't even say that. Yesterday was the last day that I was really pregnant with Blue. Today, a year ago, the doctors told us that his heart had stopped beating. And ours did too.

I hold a lot of anger towards the whole thing. I wish they had explained things better. I wish they had let me make a more informed choice. What would I have done different? I'm not 100% sure. Jenn and I would have had a longer conversation about how Blue would have come into the world. I am 100% sure I would have had him cremated. I could have him here with us.

Saved in my files on my work computer is an 18 page letter that I have written to the hospital. 18 pages of how they should handle things in the future. 18 pages of anger, tears, and lessons on how to better communicate. Not only did we lose our son that day, we lost our chance to keep him forever. I had no idea what I was signing up for in "choosing" the D&E. We will never know what his precious face looks like. We will never be able to say we held his hand. Kissed our sons toes. I feel very cheated, not only by his death, but the way it all was handled. I don't ever want to see Dr. A again.

The fact that five days later Jenn had surgery in the same hospital and was treated with more care and sympathy than I was also royally pisses me off. I wasn't even sent home with painkillers. No one warned me about the contractions. No one warned me that my breasts would leak milk. Milk that our son would ever be able to taste. Milk that had no chance of sustaining Blue.

There isn't a hour that goes by that I don't relive the entire thing, more the sounds, the voices. Hearing my doctor not say the words. Hearing myself scream. Scream so loud it still echos through my head. Calling my parents and hearing my dad's pain. Hearing Elissa not believe me. Hearing Lyz talk with a voice that told me she knew before I got to tell her. Hearing Jenn cry next to me in bed, holding my belly and sobbing.

It really is the sounds that haunt me. The nightmares have gone away for the most part. But I don't believe the haunting sounds will ever leave.

Tomorrow we will have a cake. Actually we will have two. One to celebrate Blue's first birthday. One to celebrate our 6th anniversary. Six years ago as I walked down the aisle to meet Jenn, the mother of our future children, I had no idea that five years later we would be mourning the death of our child.

We hurt so much. The letter will probably never be sent. I've never even let Jenn read the contents. I think I've written it more for me. I think that at some point I will print it out and burn it.

Maybe I'll save those ashes. At least we will always have Blue in our hearts.

A recap of our day after Wednesday

I tell you what, for the most part, my friends are wonderful. I only got a couple of texts wishing me a Happy Thanksgiving. Most of the texts or calls I got were to wish me a Happy Thursday or Happy Day after Wednesday!

My boss spent 20 minutes yelling at me that I would not come join his family for Thanksgiving. Nope.
Why.
Not thankful enough.
Just come eat free food then.
Nope.
Why.
I'm boycotting all related items today.
Fine, then I am feeling a little grr at you right now.
Okay.

So I left work and went home to pick Jenn up and we headed to......

Ruby Tuesdays!!!

Mmmmmm salad... (Kim, please note the addition of sunflower seeds just for you)


And...because we felt like it and because they tasted darn good...
mmmmm Margaritas!!!


The three flavors are Strawberry, Regular and oh so appropriately Blue!!

After dinner we headed to KMart to look at their selection of Christmas lawn decor. I really wanted to add a hannahunt (you might know that as an elephant...my cousin Kevin used to call them hannahunts and that has stuck in my head), and holy crap, they had one! But...it was $79.00 and I'd much rather wait until after Christmas and get it on super sale!! So...there will be a bare spot on our lawn until 12/26.

We did however find lots of other good deals...a great gift for Avery that was half off....and um, can't think of what else we bought?? Hmm, I blame the margaritas!

Then we headed to the gas station to get gas, and SLUSHIES!!! And headed home for a Dr. Mario tournament...which I won.

All in all we had an absolutley wonderful day after Wednesday. I hope all of yours were wonderful, or as good as they could have been, or how ever you wanted them to be!!

love and hugs!