Happy Birthday, B.!

B's third birthday was a good one, I think. We had a party on Saturday, attended by our families, including a surprise (to B) cameo by his cousin, Little E, who came down from VT. B had a fantastic time. And then tonight, we went out for a family dinner, and he was thrilled when they brought him a Hoodsie with a candle in it. To top off his day, he skyped with his NYC cousins. Good times.

My little boy is getting so big, so fast.

My Baby

My baby really isn't a baby anymore. Tomorrow (at 3:58 AM to be precise), he'll be three years old. The past three years have gone by in a blink. A blink so loaded with love it still steals my breath sometimes.

Before B, I thought love was only accompanied by an ache if it was going wrong. But with B, I've learned that's not always true. The love of a parent for her/his child is an aching, desperate, beautiful thing. The thought of his smile can make me smile. The thought of his crying can bring me to tears. I would, as the saying goes, lay down in traffic for him. Sometimes, I can be completely content just to watch him sleeping. Or playing. Or thinking. His expressions of love are like a magical elixir for whatever ails me.

I had a life full of love and blessings before he came along, but I couldn't have imagined the love and blessings I would gain because he did.

Grateful

Back before I met E, I remember one of my friends asking me if I thought meeting the right guy would truly make me happier than I "naturally was." And I told her that, yes, I did, since the only thing in my life I truly wasn't happy about was all the douchebags that littered my lovelife. She was skeptical. But the thing is, I was right. I am happier with E in my life.

I love, more than I can really express adequately here, how, when I wrestle with a problem for days - agonize over discussing it with him because he might think I'm an idiot, or a spoiled princess, or what have you - then he can listen to me for five minutes and offer me the input and support I've been craving all along, and suddenly this enormous catastrophe seems so easily resolved.

He's my Knight. C'est tout.

The Best Thing

One of the best things about life is also one of the scariest things. Unpredictability. We can't predict the future. But doesn't that also mean we're not tied to any specific future? See? Awesome and scary.

I used to visit psychics a lot. There was one in particular I used to see in college. I loved going to her, because she would talk about my future in such wonderful terms. I'm a hopeless romantic and was hopeless romantically in college, so her descriptions of the great love I would find in the future were enormously appealing. She got a pretty major detail wrong, which doesn't matter at all now, although it fed my romantic fantasies in unrealistic ways for many years. But then again, that fantasy person got me through a lot of rough times, so I guess that served its purpose.

But the love I found is so different in so many ways from what she or any psychic ever described. And it's still as amazing as I could've dreamed.

All this by way of saying I wasn't locked into that future she saw. Nor am I locked into ANY future. The possibilities are endless. Just because I or someone else foresaw some specific thing for me doesn't mean that specific thing HAS to happen. I can decide on a future for myself and make it happen, and that's as freeing as it is terrifying.

And so, just because to this point, I haven't fully been able to foresee the future I want professionally, that doesn't mean it can't happen. It just means I need to visualize what I want and go after it with everything I've got.

Two Steps Up, One Step Back

A couple of weeks ago, I compared a miscarriage to having your heart broken, and the parallels live on, for me.

What I remember most from my period of heartbreak, lo those many years ago, was that I would be fine for days, or even weeks, and then...something would trigger my memory in an especially vivid way, and WHAM - I would spend a day near tears. It was like a gut punch when it happened. In fact, there is a certain song that, to this day, when I hear it, it knocks the wind out for a second. This, despite knowing my life has taken such a better path than it would've if that relationship had worked out. Even though I love my husband and son more than I ever even knew I could love something - that song can bring me back to that night over a decade ago, just for a second. Memory is powerful.

That's kind of where I'm at today. I've spent the past two days (B has been out of the house) spending some 1:1 time with my pig sty of a home. As such, I've come across a couple things I'd tucked away in corners after the miscarriage - my binder of info from my OB's office, the Bella band I bought two days before I found out I wouldn't be needing it...stuff like that. And it makes me sad again.

It's very much like healing from heart break, really, in that just like back then, I know now that I'm ok. That this happened for a reason. That life will go on and be happy. That I will feel better again, just like I have started to. But just in that moment - WHAM. Sad.

I know that having my heart broken made me a better person. It made me stronger. It made me aware of what I wanted, and what I would not settle for...or at least, it started that process. And I know the same is true of this experience. It's making me stronger. It's making me a better wife and mother. I know it is. Personal growth aches, though, doesn't it?

Explanations

"Well, we can't say for sure that this caused the miscarriage...but it didn't help."

That's what my endocrinologist said yesterday about the timing of the previously mentioned thyroid relapse diagnosis and subsequent (by literally one day) pregnancy. Explanations are supposed to provide closure, right? This one didn't. It felt like a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. I've spent so many years worrying that my thyroid disease would prevent me from having healthy pregnancies, and finally, it prevented one. Maybe. Probably.

Overall, I'm doing well moving on from this. It happens. It's happened to more people I know than not, in fact. So, I don't think this news really sent me into a tailspin or anything. It is what it is.

Plus, the other night, I had a dream about my grandfather. It'd been a really long time since I'd had one, but the other night in my dream, he was smiling and he hugged me and rubbed my head the way he used to, and he told me everything was all right. And I believed him. Because from him, "Everything's all right," is all the explanation I ever need.

The Corner

First of all, a happy 9th birthday to my oldest niece.

I think I've started to turn the corner this weekend. I think. I'm sure there will be rough days ahead, but this weekend, for the first time in a few weeks, I haven't had a lump in my throat constantly, and I've actually felt like doing something, anything, other than sitting on the sofa or drinking wine. So, progress. YAY!