First Day of Spring

When you're bald you can ride in the car with the windows down and not get tangly hair. I think I'm going to be disappointed when my hair grows back... we are more adaptable than we think.

J will be 11 next week, the day before my surgery in fact, and I remember the weather was like this that year too because I was wearing a short-sleeved maternity dress for some time. When I visited him in the NICU, before I could drive, I remember it being really hot and uncomfortable waiting for my taxis to come, so much so that after about three days I just started driving again. He was a snuggler from the start my sweet thing, I used to go to the NICU and think he was missing from his plastic box, but he was always scrunched down in a little ball inside his swaddling. To this day he sleeps with the blankets over his head and waxes poetic about the glory of comfy blankets. Naturally, G always kicked the blankets off when he was little. Different, but both beloved.

J was seven weeks premature, an emergency birth, and had intestinal surgery when he was one day old and 4.4 lbs. He spent five weeks in the NICU, came home and has barely been sick a day in his life. This boy who I was told I would never conceive and then that he would have a brain impairment {if he lived}, is instead the most articulate, expressive, creative old soul I have ever met. Because of his stomach, however, he couldn't tolerate formula so he nursed exclusively for quite some time and then non-exclusively {of course} for just over three years. So despite being ready to let them go, I am oh-so appreciative of these breasts. They have served me well and I have loved them always, they leave with honor and dignity and may they be at peace.

I've had a near perfect 48 hours. Friends unexpectedly dropping by at just the right time, dinner on the porch, worn out yoga pants shed for skirt, making green, minty milkshakes with whipped cream and shaved chocolate with delighted little boy, weeding garden and 10 bags of mulch laid down today. And no, I could not have moved those bags around alone, I got to do the fun part, spreading it around with a rake. 10 bags down, 10 to go and during my recovery I'll get to sit outside and watch the plants grow instead of suffocate under grass and weeds.

A month ago I was ready to put my head in the oven and today it is such a beautiful day... we are adaptable.