Happy Mother's Day!!!
Aidan was
so excited about celebrating my first Mother's Day with him that he decided to wake up at 4am this morning! And once he was up (and fed), he didn't want to go back to sleep! This is extremely unusual for him but he did okay for the rest of the day so I'll chalk it up to excitement about Mother's Day! *wink*
Aidan got me the most beautiful jewelry for our first Mother's Day together. He got me a beautiful Blue Topaz ring, with a diamond and two Blue Topaz hearts. (Blue Topaz is his birthstone).
He also got me a gorgeous heart shaped necklace with diamonds and a Blue Topaz. (Good Job, Aidan!
(and Daddy...))
Aidan, Alex, and I went to breakfast with Grandma and Grandpa Ramos and Uncle JR. We had a very nice breakfast - Aidan enjoyed playing with Grandma and Grandpa.
He is also starting to get the hang of sitting up in a restaurant highchair (this was his third time).
After breakfast, we headed out to a local Garden Center and did some shopping. Aidan enjoyed looking at all of the colorful flowers (and playing with Grandpa, of course!) Aidan and Daddy bought me two rose bushes and we also bought a bouquet of flowers for Michael. We're hoping to plant the rose bushes in front of our picture window in the front of the house before we leave for Florida. We'll have to wait and see, though, because the local forecast is RAIN. All week long.
When we were done shopping, we said our goodbyes to Grandma, Grandpa, and Uncle JR and we headed over to the cemetery to see Michael and bring him his flowers. The cemetery was extremely busy (probably even busier than Easter!), but there wasn't anyone visiting the baby section, so we had a little bit of privacy which was nice. We also ran into friends of ours whose son is buried in the cemetery so it was nice to stop and chat with them for a while.
We spent Friday night with Grandma and Grandpa May because they left for California on Saturday (yesterday). Aidan had lots of fun playing with Grandma and Grandpa...
Now that we're home, Alex is getting some much needed sleep and Aidan is (drum roll, please)........ napping! Yep - he's taken one hour naps (from 1pm to 2pm) for the past three days in a row! I'm so proud of our little man. And I really feel like the luckiest mom in the world. When I look at Aidan I am still in amazement that Alex and I
created this beautiful little individual. It is such a miracle. I feel so blessed.
I feel blessed with Aidan, yet still saddened by Michael's death. I think sometimes it's harder now that we have Aidan because I know
exactly what we're missing with Michael. There are times when the feelings of utter joy when I'm holding Aidan are clouded by a feeling of bittersweetness. I came across this article about a year ago, but I hung onto it and I'd like to share it... It was written by Erma Bombeck in May 1995.
"If you're looking for an answer this Mother's Day on why God reclaimed your child, I don't know.I only know that thousands of mothers out there today desperately need an answer as to why they were permitted to go through the elation of carrying a child and then lose it to miscarriage, accident, violence, disease, or drugs.Motherhood isn't just a series of contractions; it's a state of mind. From the moment we know life is inside of us, we feel a responsibility to protect and defend that human being. It's a promise we can't keep.We beat ourselves to death over that pledge. 'If I had taken him to the doctor when he had a fever.' 'If I hadn't let him use the car that night.' 'If I hadn't been so naive, I'd have noticed he was on drugs.'The longer I live, the more convinced I become that surviving changes us. After the bitterness, the anger, the guilt, and the despair are tempered by time, we look at life differently.While I was writing my book I Want to Grow Hair. I Want to Grow Up. I Want to go to Boise, I talked with mothers who had lost a child to cancer. Every single one said that death gave their lives meaning and purpose. And who do you think prepared them for the rough, lonely road they had to travel? Their dying child. They pointed their mothers toward the future and told them to keep going. The children had already accepted what their mothers were fighting to reject.The children in the bombed-out nursery in Oklahoma City have touched more lives than they will ever know. Workers who had probably given their kids a mechanical pat on the head without thinking that morning, were making calls home during the day to their children to say, 'I love you.'This may seem like a strange Mother's Day column on a day when joy and life abound for the millions of mothers throughout the country. But it's also a day of appreciation and respect. I can think of no mothers who deserve it more than those who had to give a child back.In the face of adversity we are not permitted to ask, 'Why me?'. You can ask, but you won't get an answer. Maybe you are the instrument who is left behind to perpetuate the life that was lost and appreciate the time you had with it.The late Gilda Radner summed it up pretty well. 'I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned the hard way that some poems don't rhyme and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what is going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.'"This column ran on what should have been Erma Bombeck's first Mother's Day... without Alex, her first baby, in May 1995
