Day 1, 12-4-15, This morning the kids woke up to find the elves with a skittle message "We are back".

Day 1, 12-4-15, After both Britt and Ruth took some time to sound it out and read the message, they were all excited to eat the skittles with breakfast.

Day 2, 12-5-15, We spent all day walking around the elves, and not using the ceiling fan.

Day 3, 12-6-15, We came home from Church to discover that the elves had gotten hungry, and got into the Christmas goodies. Grandmother's candy and oyster crackers were a hit, as was Ahna's Chex Mix.

Day 4, 12-7-2015, Apparently the elves haven't been told that we have more rooms in the new house than just the kitchen, because once again they were bringing Christmas surprises in there. They dyed the last of the milk green and left a note, "because green milk tastes better."

12-8-15, Day 5, The Elves take a shower.

12-8-15, Day 5, Ruth shreked about Twinkle and Jingle being naked in the bathtub. Britt just thought it was weird that they leave their boots and hats on in the shower.

12-8-15, Day 5, Mistletoe is covering his eyes while the girls get undressed.

12-9-15, Day 6, Today the elves used special dry erase markers, lipstick and some shaving cream to make a Santa hat on the mirror. Their message said, "Hohoho, Don't you look like Santa?"

Britt was really worried about who drew on a mirror like that. But Momma assured him it would all clean up easy. That the elves brought special markers, not regular markers. He said that was good because they would get a spanking if they drew on mirrors. I told him yes they would. (Which by the way is precisely the reason, the elves weren't sure if they should pull this stunt. No need to encourage bad behavior, my three have it covered without inspiration.) Grumpy pants, wouldn't co-operate for a picture, and said, just post that one. She was mad that I made her put on clean pants for supper, and they weren't a pair that she likes. Rebecca insisted that Spiderman and Little Spiderman take a picture with her.

12-10-15, Day 7, Do you wanna build a snowman? (out of playdo?)

Mistletoe's letter reads:

Do you want to build a snowman? Do you like mine? Since it does not snow in Florida, we brought you some playdo. We thought you might like to play with it while Momma unboxes the schoolroom today. What do you think of my snowman? Jingle and Twinkle say it doesn't look like Olaf. Olaf says it looks good though.

Love,
Mistletoe
(and Jingle and Twinkle)

12-11-2015, Day 8, The elves are up to mischief and mayham with the Minions.

Dave and Kevin watch it all while Twinkle turns bananas into minions. Apparently she used Jerry, Stuart, and Kevin as models. Apparently Stuart just knocked out Mistletoe with the fart gun. While a horrified Jerry and a laughing Jingle look on.

12-17-2015, Day 9, After a somewhat lengthy absence due to really bad behavior at bedtime, the elves appeared today in the fireplace.

Twinkle was inspecting the chimney. Wonder why she needed to do that. Ruth finally figured out that she was check to make sure Santa could get in. I told her I guess she needed to see if it was structurally sound. Britt on the other hand was real insistent that Mistletoe was make a hole in there, so that Santa could get down the chimney. I informed him there was already a hole, that's why it was a chimney. Jingle doesn't look like any contractor I would trust. I think she's just looking for an excuse to use that thing.
12-24-2015, Day 16, The elves brought the snow that they promised the kids, in the post card that they mailed them right before Thanksgiving. It came in the form of big snow flakes hung from the ceiling and special North Pole snow that wouldn't melt all over the windows.




12-24, Day 16, Tonight as promised the Elves climbed down so the kids could tell them bye, before Santa picks them up tonight.

12-24, The kids playing and talking to their elves before the leave for another year.

Merry Christmas, Abigail,

Today marks 4 months since the last time we held you, since we said hello and goodbye.  I tucked your siblings into bed the other night and Rebecca asked me to sing her song.  Each of them have their own song, that your Daddy and I have sung them since they were tiny.  Sometimes we sung them over and over to get them to go to sleep, or to stop fussing in the car when they were over whatever car trip we were on.  Britt's is "Amazing Grace."  Ruth's is "Grace Tis a Charming Sound."  Rebecca's is "Sweet Hour of Prayer." I was sad to think we wouldn't do that with you but then I was happy to think that you do have a song, "Be Still My Soul" and your Daddy did sing it to you there in the hospital room.

Merry Christmas, even if I'm not that merry this year.  I wonder do you celebrate Christmas in heaven?  Oh I know that Christmas isn't really this time a year so the season is all wrong.  And I know that eternity is without time.  I cannot truly fathom what a world without time is like.  I suppose every day (or all day?) is really a celebration of His birth, life, and atoning death.  There have been times this Christmas when I've been unable to sit down and do our Advent ornaments with your siblings.  I have made your Daddy retell some of the stories instead.  It's hard to see your absence everywhere I look.

I still miss you intensely but most days the pain isn't so acute. I like how another writer put it "like a constant melody, your name pouring through my mind, on repeat. Your memory the undercurrent of my days."  Last week, a friend of mine who was due just a few weeks before me had her little boy.  He's a beautiful little thing, but it struck me for the first time that I should be about to meet you.  I have been ignoring your due date, only thinking of time in reference to the moment we lost you.

I find my thoughts most often turn to heaven when I think about you.  I wonder what it is like there.  What is it that you see.  In 6th grade we had a project, for Mrs. Stevenson I think, in reading.  We created a book of poems and things.  We had to illustrate them too.  One of the topics was what we though would be the perfect day.  I remember drawing pictures of people having a snowball fight in swim suits.  Because the temperature was perfect, not hot and not cold, and you could do literally anything, because the snow wouldn't melt and the water was always warm.  For some reason that came to mind a few weeks ago, and I wondered is that what Heaven is like, perfect for everything?  Your brother asks alot what Heaven will be like.  What do we eat?  Are there animals?  What will we do?  Do we have houses?  Will there be toys there? I find myself unable to answer his questions, let alone my more complex ones.  What are our relationships like there?  Will we know Him as we are known, or does that verse mean that we will know everyone as He knows us, or just finally know and understand ourselves, or that we will have perfect knowledge like He has?  How is it that we will know so much and obvious have a clear understanding of the sinners we are, and yet can truely forgive ourselves and be satisfied?  Will we have fellowship with one another in Heaven, or just be together, but in individual worship and communion with Him?  How can I enjoy finally meeting you, when the focus isn't on us but Him?  This is one I wrestle with alot.

Heaven is on my mind alot since losing you and not for the right reasons.  Going sooner rather than later is more attractive now.  I suppose it isn't unlike older Church members I've heard say that they are more anxious to go than they use to be when the heartache and loss here begin to outway all they know and love that is there.  The realization that EVERYONE will meet you before me, also sometimes digs like a knife.  If the natural order of life isn't interrupted.  Your great grandparents and grandparents will be gone before me.  Sometimes I think that since eternity exists outside of time, we all sort of arrive at the same time.  That we all arrive, and then head off to pick up the rest of His people in the Resurrection.  But then I don't know.  I have always been very curious, and had a desire to learn more, about most everything but math (ha!), I suppose most of this questions I'll just have to learn to live with.

Love,
Momma

Abigail,

Happy Almost Birthday.  Today is the day that I was secretly hoping would be your birthday.  When we were expected Rebecca I felt like her birthday would be too close to Britt's. I at least wanted their special days a month apart.  And they are January 22 and February 22.  So when we found out you were due the last day of the year, You Daddy "knew" that you had to come a few days earlier to get the tax break and get home home before the 31st so that everything would be billed on this year's insurance, since we were about to meet the year's deductible.  The midwives were tentatively agreeable.  I though, secretly hoped that your special day would be a month earlier than Britt's.  I was hoping for today December 22, 2015.  Like the other two whose birthdays I chose, you would share your special day with someone special, Aunt Brenda's birthday is today.  Plus that gave us the chance to have you and bring you home right before Christmas, what could be better.

But all my dreams for you, everything that should have made today one of absolute happiest days of my life, lays around me in pieces.  I can remember with such clarity the moment your Daddy turned to me in his little red car, sitting in the Church yard out in front of Little Union on New Year's Eve and asked me to marry him.  I can remember the wonder of seeing Britt on the 3D ultrasound, how very much he looked like your Daddy.  I can remember crying when I first held Ruth.  I can remember the feeling of knowing I had as He told me that Rebecca was a girl.  Each of these moments is etched with amazing joy and wonder on my mind.  But with you there is the bitterness and sorrow of broken dreams.  There is the agony of the life-long unknowns.  There is the loss of innocence and of myself.

The wonder and beauty of meeting you for the first time.  Watching you lock eyes with me for the first time and being once more in amazement of the unfathomable miracle that new life is.  Holding a new warm baby that fits in my arms just right.  Hearing your little voice.  Crowing about finally getting a red head or once again hearing your Daddy say "better luck next time, darling."  The joyous calls to the family.  Watching Rebecca become a big sister as she holds you for the first time with the amazing look that each of her siblings before her got as they became a big brother and big sister.  The feeling of home, and all being right in the world.  All that replaced by complete silence, the cold and clamminess of death. A Christmas baby born on a sunny, warm day in August.  Looking out the window and seeing life unchanged for everyone else.  Hearing the heartbeat of every child but my own.  Then to have you at night, and the emptiness.  Everything out of season, everything wrong.  Instead watching Rebecca cradle and talk to my locket and say your name.  Without any understanding that she has a little sister.

More was lost than just that moment with you though.  I have heard it said that the loss of a child is the loss of the future.  I have lost the two year old you, the one with the streak of wild defiance and ecstatic joy all at once.  I have lost the five year old you, the one who NEEDS to understand everything, to make sense of the world around her.  I have lost the 8 year old you, not a baby but no where near grown.  I have lost the teenage you, the one who feels everything accutely and longs for something while not knowing what.  I have lost the young woman, who believes in everything and fears nothing, who runs full throttle chasing her dreams.  I have lost the young married you, the one who loves deeply and has such starry eyed plans for my grandchildren.

More was lost than the major things we even lost the mundane, the ordinary.  I don't know your eye color or hair color.  I don't know your favorite color, what you like to eat.  I don't know if you are a Coke girl or a Dr. Pepper girl.  I don't know if you a Gator fan or an Auburn fan.  I don't know if you love to read or to be out doing.  I don't know anything about you.  What sort of personality do you have?

All of this is agonizing my daughter.  But despite the enormity of the pain that losing you has brought.  I wouldn't give you up.  You remain my daughter.  I could have had just another period in April.  Life could have continued in our own blissful family of 5.  I could have never been given you.  Our short few months together while not preferable to a lifetime together, is far better than to have never been given you.  For a short time, I held you.  I heard your heartbeat. I saw you roll and tumble. I felt you move.  Oh I'm so sorry it wasn't safe for you there, I am so sorry you couldn't stay.  One day though I'll be there too, and one day I will see myself the wonders that you see.  I will walk with you there.  And we'll know each other.  One day He'll come for me too, and we can be in His very presence.  Until that day, we love you so very, very much.

Love,
Momma

Then yesterday Britt opened up a package from my parents, he had left his Indiana Jones hat in Alabama, so they had mailed it back.  Inside Mother had also sent an ornament, one that I had remarked was cute when she was helping me look for an ornament for my Primitive Baptist Secret Sister.  It was really wonderful to open it up and see our whole family there together.  I had forgotten just how pretty it was.  And I especially like the stockings since I'm pretty sure that I won't be able to finish Abigail's stocking in time for Christmas.

The third new ornament for this year is one I got at Niagara Falls.  For some reason I'm not entirely sure off, seeing red leaves this fall has reminded me of Abigail.  Maybe it's because I first saw them there at the Falls just three weeks after her death, when she was continually on my mind.  Maybe it's because I like to imagine her as a red head.  The Falls were a beautiful and frightening in their power.  I can remember at one point standing on the observatory bridge being struck with two thoughts.  The amazing beauty of something so vast.  And the thought that leaping off the top would be a sure fire way to end the agony.  I mean from that height, with the rocks and sidewalk below along the river, there would be no surviving that.

I stood there looking at the clothes hanging in the closet, and thought today is going to be the day.  I reached out and picked up a green shirt, one I bought shortly before the last pregnancy.  I found it on clearance for $3 at J.C.Penny's a thin summer shirt after fall was in full swing, it was my favorite color, with a pattern that made it easy to dress up, but still absolutely perfect with a pair of jeans.  The absolute best kind of shirt.  The kind that I wear at least once every week, maybe twice if I won't see the same people both days.  I looked at it and thought today will be the day.

Then another green shirt came to mind, nearly the exact same shade, a maternity shirt that was new to me for Abigail's pregnancy.  Where did I get it from, Bekah maybe?  Some one else?  I can remember the first time I pulled it out of the bag of maternity clothes.  The perfect color, the ruffled neckline, that wasn't too low for a change.  With a tie in the back, perfect for changing sizes, and oh so soft, just my style.  I wore that shirt every week, before I even really needed to wear maternity clothes.  And sometimes, if I thought I could get away with it, I wore it two days a week.  I remember putting that shirt on the morning of the ultrasound, before Gary took the obligatory baby bump picture, for a post I had already begun to draft, one I've long since deleted as too painful to revisit.  Then I thought no, I'm not big enough yet to really fill this shirt out.  I'll save it for later in pregnancy, when I can get a good picture with this little one.  And I folded it back up and put it in the cradle with all the other maternity clothes.

Instead I pulled out the black shirt with the grey stripe, just like on that morning when everything changed.  One day I'll be ready to live life in color again.  One day I'll put on more than the black or the grey or the white, and not feel like having a panic attack like I did on Friday night on the way to Old Carroll's annual meeting.  I had my black dress on with red tights.  I thought it was time, that I could do it.  But the bright garish color felt all wrong, and it had me in a tailspin in the car.  Maybe it'll be soon.  I still have to wear Abigail's bracelet every day, or I carry it in my pocket, if Gary isn't here to put it back on for me after I take a shower.  But, I don't have to wear her necklace every day now, and today I even chose to wear a different one, which is something I haven't done since we lost her.  I'm getting there, even if it is so much slower than I would like.

And when she came to the man of God to the hill, she caught him by the feet; but Gehazi came near to thrust her away.  And the man of God said, Let her alone; for her soul is vexed within her and the Lord hath hid it from me, and hath not told me.  Then she said, Did I desire a son of my lord?  Did I not say, Do not deceive me?

Like the rest of my life, my desk area in our bedroom is a work in progress.