Kyra, Elijah, and Owen performing Little Red Riding Hood!

Kyra is a blogger now. If you are into reading twitter’esque blog posts from an almost seven year old little girl, add her to your feed reader. Amy thinks I’m crazy for letting her post without checking and editing first, but I say it’s more fun that way. (Famous last words?)

Anyway, Kyra is blogging at Let The Little Children… .

The Internet is such a strange place. You click a link and find yourself introduced to someone’s life that you weren’t prepared to enter into. You make a decision…do you read on, cry, and feel your heart break in empathy, or do you click away from someone’s heartbreaking reality and spare yourself the pain of remembering that mothers suffer…babies die…happily ever afters sometimes never come.

Reading someone’s blog lets you enter into their life. It allows you to get to know a stranger’s intimate thoughts…their hopes and dreams…their fears…and sometimes what they had for breakfast. Some bloggers are funny. Some are sweet. Some blog to keep track of their family’s memories, and some blog to share their journey with anonymous online readers who might champion their cause and remember them in their prayers.

Reading blogs can be a very tumultuous experience. I have followed someone’s blog that was focused on their adoption process. I read as they brought two beautiful Haitian children home to join their family, and then recoiled in horror when I checked in a few days later to read that one of their birth children had been terribly burned in a cooking accident. I’ve unsuspectingly visited a mommy blogger’s blog to find a message posted by the blogger’s sister-in-law saying that she had passed away during a c-section, leaving behind a husband, a newborn baby, and six older children. You expect one thing, and you get a large dose of real life instead. In the last couple of months, I’ve cried many tears over the deaths of three different babies. I’ve read their parents’ blogs, and I’ve cried heartbreaking tears of empathy. Sometimes, it’s nearly too much.

It’s a strange place, this Internet world. I follow their stories. I smile at their children’s antics, and cry when their mothers die. I sometimes turn blogging friends into real life friends. Sometimes, reading each other’s blogs turns into phone calls turns into visits turns into best friends. Sometimes, it’s just too much to bear a stranger’s pain as well as mine, and I say a prayer and click away.

It’s a strange place, where you have the right and freedom to choose to care or to look away.

It’s a strange place.

Today has lasted forever. Well, actually, I just looked at the time and today has turned into tomorrow. I feel like I’ve done nothing at all today. I have spent most of it right here on this couch.

I woke up around eight this morning with a little girl who was not going back to sleep. I woke up exhausted. I had spent the night with a sick little boy and a sick’ish little girl. Owen has been sick for days…cough, congestion, and low grade fevers, and Abby Jo has a congested nose. They were both in bed with me. Owen mostly slept, but did so fitfully at times, due to his coughing. Abby Jo didn’t sleep well at all. Poor baby couldn’t breathe well because she was so congested, but when I suctioned her nose with the nasal aspirator she would wake up. Once I would finally get her to sleep, I would drift off for a while, only to wake again when she got too stuffy again. It was not a good night of sleep at all.

After a night like that, I was up long enough to change her diaper, check my email, nurse her, and make Owen a doctor’s appointment. Then, I sent Elijah after a pillow and blanket for me, and settled in right here on the couch for a nap. I woke up at one o’clock, left Kyra in charge of her sister, and went to take a shower. Half way through my shower, Kyra came and reported that she was “going through the list…I put a blanket over her to see if she was too cold, but she didn’t stop crying. So, I unbuttoned her sleeper to see if she was too warm, but she didn’t stop crying. She might be hungry, but I can’t feed her. She needs you. I checked in her diaper and saw poop, so I thinks he needs her diaper changed, too.” I’m sure you probably heard the frustrated sigh that I sighed. I told her to go wake up her daddy, and I’d be out in a minute. When I emerged from the bathroom dripping and wrapped in a towel, I found Abby Jo, not in the care of her daddy (who was still sleeping), but being crooned to by her big sister who was quite deftly changing her diaper. Kyra was doing a good job with the diaper, but Abby was having a meltdown. I finished up the diaper changing, wiped Abby’s nose, and scooped her up. I barely put her down for the rest of the day.

Abby was so worked up that, even after I nursed her, she began crying the moment I put her down. She didn’t want Chris or Kyra to hold her at all. She was only quiet if I held her. I talked Chris into taking Owen to the doctor, since Abby was so upset, and went and sat with her on the couch. I’ve been here all day. I didn’t even manage to eat for the first time until three in the afternoon. Abby obviously felt bad, but I wasn’t sure what was wrong with her. After two terrible diapers, I assumed her belly hurt.

Chris brought Owen home after a doctor’s visit that included chest x-rays, with a diagnosis of an ear infection and some antibiotics. Thankfully, he didn’t have pneumonia. He’s quite miserable, though, and cries over the least little thing. He’s sleeping in his daddy’s arms on the couch right now.

The entire day, I held Abby. She cried a lot, even when I was holding her. There were times when she seemed to be feeling better, and she smiled and cooed at me as she snuggled in my arms. She would go to sleep, but, as soon as I tried to lay her in her basket, she would wake up and cry. I resigned myself to a day full of nothingness, and just held her. She’s finally sleeping in her basket for the last fifteen minutes. That’s the longest I’ve went without holding her all day. I am tired.

As frustrating as it is to not get anything done and as tiring as it is to try to soothe a fussy infant all day, there were moments when I would look down at this breathtakingly beautiful baby in my arms and just be overwhelmed with love…staggered at the truth that this tiny, perfect little human is mine. Mine.

It’s all worth it.

Today is my handsome husband’s 33rd birthday. In order to get in shape for Army this summer, Chris is on a diet. So he got to celebrate, not with our customary lasagna and cake (cheesecake if he’s lucky), but with plain chicken breast and steamed veggies. He got a yogurt for dessert.  His birthday activities included working out and going to work. Whole lotta yay, right? Poor guy. One thing he does  have going for him today is the fact that he has four beautiful children who adore him. They picked him flowers (white clover), and then they made him this video.

As he headed out the door to work this evening, I said, “Happy birthday, honey.” He smiled and said, “I’m one year closer to dying now.”

That’s the spirit, Baby!

Happy birthday, Christopher. I love you!