I Can't Believe Our Walk is Saturday!!! Already!!

Well, our fundraising efforts for the March of Dimes are winding down. That was quick! The walk is this weekend and we are up to more than $540!! I set a really large goal of $2,000 and we didn't make it quite that far, but what we did raise so far was still a great accomplishment, so I am not disappointed. How could I be? I have some wonderful friends, relatives, and friends in the blogging community who have reached out to sponsor us. And I sincerely thank everyone who did, I just cannot begin to tell you how much it means to me that you supported a cause that has become so near and dear to my heart. (By the way, if you haven't sponsored us yet and you feel so inclined, please, by all means, feel free to click on the button with the little tiny baby Poops right there on the top of my sidebar to contribute! It takes you straight to the March of Dimes page.) Again, hugs and kisses to all of you.

Poops' birthday and this walk both really round out an eventful, emotional year for me. Today, I finished a scrapbook I've been working on of only the time we spent in the hospital NICU after Poops was born. Pictures of him in his incubator, his visitors, our hospital and NICU bracelets, an Easter card he got from a volunteer group, his discharge papers, footprints, the NICU handbook, all of it. I started working on it a few months ago because I thought it would be therapeutic for me and I couldn't have been more right. When Poops turned about 10 months old, I remember hearing someone say, if you don't move on from something traumatic in your life, you are literally punishing yourself day after day after day. Punishing yourself so that you remain in that day or period of your life and you live those days over and over again. The person called it "self abuse" and what you have to do is forgive yourself, thank God for the experience of it and move on. I wasn't sure if I was ready to move on at that moment, but I did realize that hey, that was me. I was stuck in that two-week period and I had to do something. That is the week I began to let it all go. I began the scrapbook. I joined the fight against prematurity by fundraising for the March of Dimes. And I had a dear friend of mine who also had a premature baby and by helping her, I realized I was also actually helping myself. This literally all happened within the same week. And I stopped crying every day. The fog lifted and I finally felt like celebrating. My healing had finally begun! Now, the same month Poops turns one, I am walking for prematurity and would you believe, I have also finished the scrapbook. Such a fitting end to a chapter of my life that I will always remember as a difficult blessing. It all seems to be coming to a close at the same time, and a new chapter is beginning, complete with another new life on the way! It brings a tear to my eye, but it is a happy one this time. So, I also found a couple other pictures while digging around in the files for the scrapbook and these I haven't seen since the week Poops was born. It brought back so many memories and was such a lovely surprise to see them after all this time. The one below is of Poops under the lamps that helped him with his jaundice. He had to wear this awful little purple cap and goggles that he couldn't see through and he hated so much when the nurses put it on him. While he was under the lamps, we literally only got to hold him for about 15 minutes every few hours, just to feed him, because he had to go back under the lamps. And we would flee the NICU quickly afterward because I couldn't bear the sound of his cries when the nurses put the headgear back on. The one below that is just us having a moment.