A Birthday and a ReBirthday

Just over a month ago, our valentine turned one year old. And, as I did with Mac, I looked back and wondered how twelve months had rushed past me in an (insanely emotional hurricane of a) blur.


Unlike my first go-round, however, I didn't cry in the days leading up to her big moment. I felt relief, almost - something telling me I could stop holding my breath and start putting those months behind me.

It will no longer be the "first" Valentine's Day, sunny spring afternoon or otherwise notable happening, but the days ahead will be the first I remember. The first that really count.

A fashion show in her last "baby" days.

This year, my darling girl's second, is a fresh start. She's growing fast, becoming a tiny girl instead of a squishy, happy-to-snuggle bundle of baby. She's a whole new creature. 

Valentine's Day mornings, 2012 and 2013

We're inexpressibly thankful for our little valentine and for the friends and family who came to celebrate her! (We kept it sweet, intimate and extra small because, while mama adjusted beautifully, B was not keen on a big ole party. Denialville, party of one.)


Throwing together a party the weekend after Valentine's Day is easy as pie. Toss up a few pink and red decorations, lay out a table of food and another (even larger!) one of sweets and voila: a lovefest.

This beauty tasted even better than she looked!

We had a few desserts leftover for small group that Sunday...

Our best attempt.

She refused to eat a bite! How is she mine?

The best gift for every occasion!

While her birthday a party, we counted down to her ReBirthday with mixed emotions - and we didn't want to gloss over it.

Twenty days after her birthday, March 5, marked a year since Mary Brooks' surgery. I anticipated a flood of emotions, of difficult flashbacks - but they never came. From dawn to dusk that day I rode a wave of gratitude with every memory, every attempt at recalling those hours, every text message I reread that I never remembered writing in the first place.

It was an out of body experience, replaying the day in third person, feeling only a down-to-my-bones kind of thankfulness. After an excruciatingly long season of heartache, it was miraculous to feel just the upside of things - to see what the girl living that experience last year couldn't yet know.

What a difference a year makes.

It was a joy - an absolute privilege - turning a day marked by devastation into one centered on counting every last little (and big) blessing in our lives. It was an occasion that deserved cupcakes if ever there was one!

Mac and I ventured over to our favorite bakery just before a monsoon kicked off downtown that evening. We had no raincoats or umbrellas (mom fail), so I found a fleece of Bradley's and put it over his head as I whisked him down the sidewalk.

Mac couldn't stand the idea I'd get wet in his place, so he kept tossing the fleece over my face; I nearly ran into a brick wall with a forty pounder on my hip as a result.

We couldn't stop laughing, and the pair of us arrived home soaked to the bone, with four delicious cupcakes safe and dry in their box. I hope I never forget that little excursion with Mary Brooks' big brother; it epitomizes the utter giddiness I felt all day long.

After the birthday cake boycott at her party, I didn't anticipate Mary Brooks' reaction to her ReBirthday cupcake:

Her enthusiasm brought me back to Mac's very first cupcake, and it was just one more way March 5 felt more like an actual birthday than some medical anniversary. I hope we always celebrate it so whole-heartedly! (And with cupcakes, obviously...)

Mary Brooks' surgery gave her a new lease on life; medically it was considered a "near miss" with an uncertain outcome. We praise God with every breath that our story has a happy ending, and that all four of us have healed from the experience.

Thanks for celebrating with us, y'all!

Hurricane 2013: Mickey, 13.1 Miles & the Flu

The last two months have (insert cliche about time flying here). In a Rip Van Winkle kinda way, I feel as though I took a quick nap mid-January and woke up browsing for Easter baskets. If only I felt as if I'd gotten that much sleep...

Instead, we've been either in "fast forward" or "full stop" mode all year long. SO much has happened!

The survivor in the top left was my coach!

On January 12th, Bradley and I joined Greenville's Team in Training to run the Walt Disney World Half Marathon. Yes, that's right! We raised a total of $2500 to benefit the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society;  it was an unspeakably empowering, surprisingly fun and absolutely enjoyable experience - start to finish.

I worried so much about the 2:30am wake-up call that I couldn't sleep past 1:00!

For a couch potato, nap-loving supporter of the Great Indoors, running 13.1 miles at the crack of dawn and living to tell the tale was enough of an accomplishment for all of 2013. I should start writing "run a half marathon" at the top of each day's to do list, just so I can cross one big, fat item off without breaking a sweat.

B and I in our corral, just minutes before he left me in the dust.

After the trauma and craziness of 2012, I needed to channel my energy into something positive, something outside myself. In August I began training with TNT, and despite an injury in December, I was able to cross the finish line upright and proud.

Cue tears.

The support of onlookers and other runners meant so much during those long miles, especially the miles eight through ten, which felt interminable!

And more tears.

Wearing my purple Team in Training jersey got me a lot of attention - coaches, participants, supporters and survivors from across the country called out, cheered, gave high fives and even ran alongside me for a time. It was invigorating and just what I needed to get me to the finish line.

So ready to be done!

I ran the last half-mile of the race listening to Mary Brooks' laugh over and over again. My feet hurt, my ankle was killing me, and I was ready for a plate full o' carbs. Her angelic little giggle, though, saw me through.

She taught me a lot about what it means to fight, and I was proud to feel like I'd made a difference in cancer patients' lives (through our fundraising) as so many people poured into our family last year. 

B and I walked off the effects of our (very early) morning "jog" by spending the next day and a half in WDW's parks. It was a refreshing little break from our everyday lives, and a very welcome one.

I was achy and tired on the way home, but after 13.1 miles, another 15 or so over two days in the parks, and an eight-hour car ride, it was to be expected.

Not 24 hours after we made it home, though, I started feeling much, much worse. The achiness grew into a full body hurt; I felt like I'd been on the losing end of a bar fight with a raging cold, to boot. I woke up the next morning and dragged my unhappy derriere to the doctor, The diagnosis: flu.

Both babies had gotten the flu vaccine, thank goodness, but we sent them to their grandparents' nonetheless. After a weekend in Orlando and the most contagious days of the flu quarantined, I spent three hours in direct contact with my children over the course of eight days; it was wretched.

After a full week of bedrest, I felt human enough to venture out into the world and, a day or so later, to have Mac and Mary Brooks come back home. It was a joy to see their sweet faces, change little diapers, fill hungry mouths, and hear their noises in the house again.

The energy to shower, if not apply mascara, was something to celebrate.

Turns out "they" are quite serious about the importance of getting your flu vaccine, peeps. And the muscle soreness that typically follows a 13.1 mile stroll can mask the early achiness of flu symptoms. Who knew?

With any luck, this will be my first and only run in with the flu - there aren't enough words to describe the un-fun-ness of that experience.

Just as soon as I got rid of my feverish flu symptoms, it was time to plan Mary Brooks' birthday party at last. It was late January, and my "V Day is D Day" motto had finally come to life. No more time for denial...

I promise to catch up more soon, but this online scrapbook doesn't do me much good if I don't use it. Many of you may have caught up with me via Instagram, the Twitter of 2013, but I'm going to prove to myself that blogging is not an outdated mode of communication chez Smith. Promise.

Hope each of you are well and keeping up with the real world a bit better than I am! Go get that flu shot, y'all - it's worth your time, trust me.

xoxo

In the Meantime

Last year was our hardest yet, but there were unbelievably sweet spots, too.

Bradley rolls his eyes at the iPhone growing from my right arm, but that faithful companion records moments my addled brain can't recall. I'm so thankful to have captured the lighter bits of 2012!

It doesn't seem fair, after unloading my heavy, healed healing heart, not to point out how much joy there is here, too.  Enjoy an overload of Smith snapshots!

Sibling sweetness as Bradley read Luke 2 on Christmas Eve.

Trying out his new "drinking glasses."

Testing out some gifts in Columbia.

In the glow of Mimi's Christmas tree.

All my favorite little people in one place.

There was a fire in the living room...

I can't stop laughing about this!

MB, with a sinus and ear infection, lost over a pound and went back to the 1st percentile. But that reflection!

An ornament from halfway around the world! One of my favorite gifts.

After a year without movies, B and I saw two in one weekend: Skyfall and Lincoln.
(Ask me how we left Anna Karenina after 90 seconds and went to watch ol' Abe...)

If I ever put my phone down, who would capture this?

A second Smith baby makes friends with Curious George.

If I'm feeding MB her lunch and one of us is dressed, it's a victory.

An ornament for my little fireman.

Mac and I got matching tats.
(Ask B how the one on the right, inside my forearm, came to reside on his ribcage.)

The handsomest boys I know.

MB learned to sign "more" and is just as proud of herself as we are.

Christmas night we snuck away for our third and final movie of the year: Les Mis. One of us bawled through half of it.

We rang in the New Year, after a big Tiger victory, with our best friends in Atlanta!

Baby hands - those dimples never get old.

Mary Brooksie wants to stand. Break my heart already!

For I am about to do something new,

See, I have already begun! Do you not see it?

I will make a pathway through the wilderness,

I will create rivers in the dry wasteland. 
Isaiah 43:19

Starting Anew: A Long Time Coming

No more apologies or false starts: we're back. I'm back.

I wanted to say so much the last two months of 2012; I didn't stay away for lack of things to discuss. (You know that's never the case.) My fear was that my words made me a broken record. Hadn't I already said those things before, in some form or another?

I spent most of 2012 grieving and, worse yet, denying I was doing so. What's there to grieve when you're home and holding your baby again? Somehow I was doing both.

I grieved in tears, in sleepless nights, in visions and nightmares, in hives and panic attacks, in headaches and laughter that turned back into bawling. I grieved in silence and in exhaustion and in the midst of powerful, endless gratitude.

I grieved in months and months deleted by the wide-eyed, glazed over, "just shuffling my feet" kind of living recovery required. I grieved in conversations I'll never remember and days that went by without my noticing.

I grieved my expectations, what I thought our life would look like. What Mary Brooks' blissful baby days would be filled with, easy and sweet as they had started. How my life would continue as I'd always known it, focused on daily concerns and only occasional, manageable roadblocks.

I grieved my innocence. The 'floating through life' feeling I had for 30 years, coasting along on a whim.

I grieved the pulling back of some unknown veil, showing me what the depths of hurt looked and felt like. And how the world was filled with more of it than I'd ever realized, busy as I was with my floating.

I was an unwilling beekeeper, scrambling to pull that life-saving veil back down and keep everything out. I wanted to take the world in through that gauzy cheesecloth again, blissful in ignorance.

I had my dukes up most of the year, bracing for another impact. I felt the constant rush of adrenaline you get after a near-miss car accident; every tiny thing made me jump, left me wanting to crawl out of my skin.

I hadn't known unbridled pain like that existed, what I felt when I came face-first into my inability to protect Mary Brooks. My inability to run the world and care for everyone I love who lives in it.

I peered into a limitless well of hurt - and panicked. Once the immediate danger was over, I couldn't pinpoint the continuing source of my grief. Then it came to me: I had made it through "this," but knew that if there was anything worse out there in the universe, deep down in that well, I couldn't survive it. I wouldn't.

I thought I really might have died from the sheer awfulness, from the consuming ache. In the hospital it welled up and burned in my chest, leaving me tearless, wordless - scarred.

In the months afterward the pain came and went - when I thought I was out of the woods (and trumpeted the news widely), it swooped in to prove me wrong.

But I couldn't let myself say the words, let myself admit that, despite the joy I wanted to exude, there was a gaping puddle of sorrow.

I know now they can coexist, grief and thankfulness. And the more you admit you're hurting, the less it aches.

I'm sorry for not telling you. For being more concerned about sounding boring or self-absorbed than I was about being authentic. For not shepherding even one person who might come across these pages in a similarly difficult moment.

I feel tremendous relief in the starting of a new year, the rolling over of a calendar and a fresh era for our family. I feel it all rising.

The upside to losing six months of memories is that we'll celebrate a second "first" Easter, Mother's Day, Fourth of July, beach trip, start of the school year.

At the end of the summer Bradley left his job, the one that kept him from us more than 100 hours in his final week, and a weight was lifted immediately. (And another one added, but I'll get to that.)

I was able to fall asleep before 4:00 am for the first time in ages, to share the daily duties of running our life, to start forming memories that lasted more than an hour or two. We began the real, slow work of recovery then.

It might sound crazy, particularly to people who aren't believers, but we felt his decision was in obedience to what our family was being called to do. Who leaves a job with nothing else lined up, not knowing what's next? After trusting the Lord with the very life of our child, you'd imagine it'd be difficult to put up a fight on something as (seemingly) small as a job. And yet we did.

It took months of prayer and discussion and weary conversations (mostly dead-eyed stares over our dining room table, sleepless as we were) to make the leap. I'm so proud of him, the hard worker and constant provider, for making this big transition. For putting aside what makes sense to the rest of the world and setting a tremendous example of obedience and faith.

So here we are, five months later, and the future is unclear in that arena. Better hours will require a career shift of sorts, and we're praying about the details (tiny things like insurance, resumes, interviews, encouragement, provision) as we go. For a planner like me, it can be unnerving - but I'm making a moment by moment commitment to surrender.

My prayer is that the Lord tells a big, wonderful story through our family, just as He did last year, despite my temper tantrums doubts and without my help.

We have seen so much confirmation of our decision, and God has richly blessed us with gifts I can't begin to name. (Being able to string words together without crying, for instance, and growing my business in ways that both excite me and help our family.)

Bradley has been busy, though not in the way he first expected, with a side project that I look forward to sharing with you, too.

For now, just know I'm back. I can't wait to discuss what matters with you - and to discuss royal babies, Downton Abbey, and every other mindless diversion I've missed.

Thank you for keeping me busy on Instagram (heaven help the folks who don't enjoy seeing pictures of my kids), Twitter and in real life. For being patient and prayerful. For emailing and calling and texting. For wading through all this.

I feel a weight off and a light at the end of this tunnel. Welcome, 2013!

 

The Lord has done great things for us, 
and we are filled with joy.
-Psalms 126:3

Cotton Headed Ninny Muggins

Six weeks away is far too long! I've been writing in my head for weeks, but after a while it just felt silly to pop in for a few short lines.

So here I am:

Every time I thought about blogging, part of my brain would say:



I'm ignoring that part and coming back all the same; there's far too much to catch up on to let my inner Phoebe win.

Later today (or tomorrow, if you're a night owl too) I have drafted a post spilling the beans on everything. Stay tuned!

And also - I miss you. And merry Christmas! And I'll save the rest for later....

xoxo,
Your Long Lost Friend

Day 31: A Sweet Halloween

Tonight was our first Halloween as a family of four, and possibly the first holiday of Mary Brooks' that I can actually remember.

She was born on Valentine's Day, which was an absolute blur, but a delightful one. I can't recall a single thing (besides what I captured on this blog) about Easter, Mother's Day or the Fourth of July; they came on the heels of MB's surgery and the shock-induced amnesia that kicked off this spring and lasted 'til fall. It's the oddest thing.

I feel like I'm getting my wits back about me - as much as I ever had them, that is - and I enjoyed trick or treating with my favorite fireman and our baby dalmatian.

 

Our friends invited us to join them trick or treating, and we couldn't refuse a quiet street with great company and a host of other flashlight-wielding little people carrying jack-o-lantern buckets. Such fun!

Mac was high on life (no sugar required), whooping in the street and squealing, "Happy Halloween! Let's go!"

Upon ringing each doorbell, though, he became tremendously shy, barely managing a "thank you" after getting his candy. Once his little feet hit the curb again, he morphed back into our little extrovert, giddy as, well, a three-year-old on Halloween.

Macky struggled a bit with the bulky fireman boots, but his costume was recognized everywhere we went and the reflective stripes served a purpose beyond looking extra fireman-ly. I call that a win!

Bradley had the difficult duty of holding Mary Brooks, wearing the softest hoodie of all time, as we walked down the block. Not a bad gig.

I hope y'all had a fabulous evening, too! The pics of dressed up dogs and candy crazy kids have made my night on Facebook and Instagram. Keep 'em coming!

*This post is day 31 in my 31 Days of What Matters. And just like that - it's November.