October: The Good, The Bad, and The Painful

It is 7:30 AM at the time of this writing. Mike has left for work, and all four kids are still sleeping. I think this is the stillest the house - and by extension, myself - has been in weeks.

Everett is on his fifth day of antibiotics for walking pneumonia. He was diagnosed after an early morning urgent care visit last weekend. He'd woken up in the middle of the night, crying that his back and chest hurt when he breathed. It was the first full day of Mike's 3 day business trip to Boston, so I was solo with the kids. Thankfully he's feeling like himself again, but has now developed a related rash. It's not bothering him at the moment, so I'm taking the wait-and-see approach, to decide whether or not I want him to be seen before his follow-up on Monday. I just had to get him a new pediatritian, since their old one is not covered under the new insurance.

Monday night Paxton had a baseball game. Tuesday night was a scouting event: trick-or-treating and halloween activities at a local nursing home. Yesterday we shopped for the perfect pumpkins and the boys spent the afternoon gutting and decorating them. Last night was baseball again. Tomorrow, God-willing, we're off to the State Fair, followed by trick-or-treating in our neighborhood at night.

And so has gone October. For better and worse we haven't stopped moving. Today, today if it's possible (is it ever really possible?) I'd like to rest. But before I do...

On October 9th, we made the heartbreaking decision to say goodbye to our Ally. She was 14 years old and severely crippled by arthritis. In her final few days she was unable to stand, and we knew that prolonging the inevitable was purely selfish on our part. The most humane and loving thing we could do was to put her down. The vet who did the euthanasia was wonderful and kind, and even had us laughing through our tears at times.


In my mind, and in a perfect world, I would write an eloquent memorial to Ally. Something that would put into words what I've been feeling the past few weeks. Somehow though, I still can't. Simply put, I just miss her, as acutely as I did the day we left the vet's office without her.

Because this is not a perfect world, and because we're not the ones in charge of timing, the very next day after losing Ally, we dried our eyes and turned our focus to a happy distraction: good friends visiting from New York for the first time. The best way to describe the visit, aside from saying we had a wonderful time, is through pictures! A few things you won't see in the pictures - their introduction to the wonder that is Wii Fit, the talking chihuahua movie, the mountain road we led them up that threatened to demolish the rental car, their first visit to our huge church, our end of the day run to Cold Stone. And of course, the laughter. Lots and lots of laughter.

They stayed for five days, after which we returned to life and reality. We mourned Ally. We took the kids to the butterfly exhibit at the Botanical Gardens..





We watched Paxton get his first (and second and third) base hits during a game...



We celebrated with Tegan as she learned to crawl and pull herself up unassisted...




And so it goes...