Toby's Third Birthday

Last Friday would have been Toby's third birthday. A special thanks to some of my fellow SIDS mothers on Facebook who remembered and sent me messages. (And to a couple of non-SIDS parents who remembered, too.) A friend set of fireworks and did them in his honor. We weren't there, but she posted pictures and a little video of it.

Unfortunately, thanks to all the rain we've been having here, we didn't get to make it to the cemetery. It will probably be another week before we can get there because Iris' second birthday is this weekend. it has rained so hard here that we got several inches and there were flash floods everywhere. Kind of a disaster.

We didn't do anything to celebrate his birthday. No cake this year, no balloons. No special flowers. I felt really sad though. This might have been the hardest one yet. I think because I have been editing the infant loss book and that's been on my mind every day I have been back in those early memories again and that's made things difficult. I feel a lot better now, though.

On Friday night Pete and I went out for a walk and ended up in a downpour. Luckily, it happened right in front of our friends' house so we popped inside and stayed there until almost 2:00 am. We had a really great time with them. We played music and talked and laughed until I literally cried. It was really the perfect way to end a kind of crappy day.

The night before I took Sam to the fair. It was old fashioned day at the fair and we ran into our neighbors there. The kids had a ball doing the cakewalk (Sam won) and riding the rides. And, I tell you, watching 20 something 6 year olds chase a greased pig is about one of the funniest things that you will ever see. That was a good night, too.


On the day after Toby's birthday we had a brilliant sunset as the rain finally came to an end. The light on our road is gorgeous at the end of the day. (To be fair, the depressing weather wasn't helping my mood.) Also, I wanted to add this picture that was taken of us back in June on our vacation to Michigan. We didn't know it at the time, but we stood in front of a lighthouse where someone had written the words "life goes on." You can see that over our heads.