Grateful...

Tonight I am angry.

I really wanted this "last ditch effort before In-Vitro Fertilization" to work.

Tonight I am sad.

I really wanted this baby.

Tonight I am not feeling well.

I've been nauseous and crampy and more all day.

But tonight...I am also grateful.

I spent the day with two sick boys. Gavin was needy all morning...and then both were needy by the afternoon. Brian is now sick, too. Just colds - runny noses. Nothing terrible. Today it was just the three of us and we did a lot of snuggling and nose wiping. During naps I worked on Gavin's birthday video which helped to cheer me up. When I got to January of this year, I was reminded of Gavin's double eye surgery. He had surgery to lift his two droopy eyelids. After surgery, he had breathing complications which landed him in the Intensive Care Unit for three days. Then, during those three days - he somehow developed a corneal abrasion! It's still a mystery to me how. When he was in the ICU he was practically comatose. It wasn't like he could gouge his own eye - but that's how they described it. Like a chunk had been taken out of his eyeball. For months - and I mean months - we did ointment in that eye around the clock. For a while it was every two hours. We took him to three different hospitals and they all concurred that he was in very real danger of losing that eye. My beautiful blue eyed half Irish-half Chinese son - losing his eye?!? It was such a traumatic time. They also told us that if he didn't lose his eye, that he would most definitely have a very white, very noticeable scar on his eye. That was fine with us when we considered the alternative.

So today, as I was sitting in silence listening to two little stuffed up boys sleeping over the monitor, I looked at the photos from that time...

Gavin had his eye sutured shut several times in the hopes healing his cornea. It would heal...and then it would come back.

But...in the end, it healed...and it stayed healed. And not only did it stay healed...there's BARELY a scar. Once again he left the doctors scratching their heads.

So today, I am grateful. I'm grateful for the children I have. I'm grateful for Gavin's miraculous journey. I'm grateful for Brian's personality that keeps us laughing and on our toes. And I'm grateful for the brief moments I spent with our daughter...who is with me every day. Tomorrow would have been the day that we celebrated Darcy's first birthday.

Yes, I am sad. Yes, I am mad. Yes, I feel like crap thank you very much. But mostly I am grateful. Because at the end of the day when you look at my journey in full - I am one lucky woman.