Last week Rebecca had her first Dentist appointment.  She like the other two, was so excited they were all arguing about who got to go first.  She climbed up in the chair like she'd done it a 100 times before.  And sat there like such a big girl.  I went back and sat in the room with her, just to see how she would do.  She was no trouble at all, and the dental hygienist thought she was so cute, and couldn't get over how she did.  They are going to wait a while longer on fixing her front tooth, since she's so little they weren't sure if she could sit still long enough.  We are going to watch it though, since it is really close to the nerve and they don't want the tooth to die.

Well, Simba told his son to protect the pride lands with the fastest, the keenest of sight, the strongest, and the fiercest.  And once the crocodiles needed to fight for the new king of the crocodiles.  Then there was one with a girl hyena, and she was nice and part of the clean up crew.  I like the show because bunga is so funny, he's the honey badger.  And I like it because in one of the movies he jumped into the waterfall to clean the smell off, but it didn't work, he was too stinky.  I like the show too, because he has the roar of the elders and the lions of the past roar with him.  It's very cool.  The End.

Friday will be my birthday.  I'm going to have a birthday party.  I invited Lilli, Julia, and Brystal my cousins, I also invited Brady, Phillip, and Jessica.  I wanted to invite Sebastian and Zane, but Momma says they can't come from Pennsylvania.  Memaw and Mister are invited two and Uncle James and Aunt Manna and Aunt Joan and Aunt Heather.  I wanted to invite Grumps and Ahna but Momma said they can't come either right now.

I'm going to have a transformer, swimming, sleepover party.  I have lots of party games planned.  First will be tug o war.  The next game is dress up.  But after you are done wearing it, you have to put it back in the guest room, because we don't have a place to unpack that stuff yet.  The next game is music chairs.  Then we'll color anything we want.  The rest of the games will be a surprise.  Then we'll have supper.  I wanted corn on the cob and hot dogs, but Daddy is making pork chops for the grown ups.  Then we'll sing happy birthday and I'll blow out my candles and eat cake.  I'm going to have a transformer cake, with orange on it.  It's my favorite color.  And then we open presents.  Then at night, we go swimming, right before bed, when we can turn on the cool lights.

I can't wait.

We know that Abigail was with us for 116 days.  From the time I *knew* we were expecting till we found out we had lost her was 141 days.  The time from the day she was stillborn to her due date was 116 days.  Today marks 141 days since her birth.  No matter how you measure it, our daughter has been gone longer than she was with us.  We are further from her than ever.  Details, that I don't have captured in pictures have begun to fade like the yellowed fraying edges of long forgotten photographs.  Unfortunately the pain of her absence hasn't faded as quickly as those details, it hasn't just disappeared like she did.  I'm grappling with the realization that it never will disappear only diminish with enough time.

My days continue to be ups and downs.  One day I almost feel normal, tackling housework, working on school with the kids, even cooking supper.  The next I don't want to get out of my fuzzy pants, I wear the prayer shawl that was made for me after Abigail passed, and if we actually eat two meals before Daddy comes home to take over, I think it's a success.  I still don't feel angry with God, like everyone claims is a part of grief.  Maybe I'm just weird.  I am struggling with alot of anger toward medical professionals.  And some anger when I watch the way others parent... or rather don't.

Most of all though I'm floundering with depression.  I have struggled for years off and on with being depressive, as I've called it with Gary.  But this requires a lengthy pep talk before I even get out of bed.  I eat because I'm suppose to rarely because anything tastes good.  I HATE being around people for any length of time, the anxiety and internal pressure to keep it together is astronomical.  There isn't much I feel like doing.  Other than grief stuff I haven't read in months, I have no clue what's going on with our regular tv shows, because Gary's been watching them without me.  I don't care much about how the house looks.  The only thing I've been able to keep up with is my writing, and that's because it's my one good grip on normalcy and sanity.  Most of all she remains constantly in my thoughts, but is the one thing no one wants to talk about.  The biggest change perhaps even bigger than the depression and anxiety is my sleep.  I've always been one that wants to sleep 10 hours a day.  Part of that might be the hypothyroid, but a large part of it is the grief.  It takes absolutely forever for me to fall asleep, up to 2 hours of laying in bed listening to Gary snore (which by itself is enough to drive anyone crazy).  Then when I get to sleep I sleep fitfully and wake up early.  And that's when I don't have the dream where we are pregnant and lose another child.  It feels inevitable that we will lose the next one too.  To the point that I see-saw between NEEDing another child and being terrified to bury another one.  The constant internal conflict of such polar opposites makes me feel like I'm going crazy, though I've been told that's normal even if everything about it is totally irrational.

On top of all of this is the constant concern that I not needlessly burden others.  The worry that I'm becoming insanely morbid.  The pressure real or imagined that everyone else is ready for me to move on and be over this.  The jealousy that Gary has adjusted and I'm stuck.  I don't like being like this, and I don't have a fix. The anger I feel when he says that we have 3 children, while I'm screaming in my head, no we have FOUR.  Navigating grief is bad enough, without wondering how I'm affect others.

Then when I wear out that mental rollercoaster, I get down to what really gives me trouble.  How is it that I stink so stellarly in my Christian walk in this.  If I really have the hope that scripture shows forth, if I really understand what Christ has done for me, then why am I so lousy at laying hold on that peace.  We are suppose to in everything give thanks.  And while that doesn't mean I should be thankful that Abigail died, back at New Year's Eve I got really mad at the notion of thanking God for this past year.  One I'm happy to be rid of.  Of course the momentary anger is just a disguise to avoiding bursting into tears.  If we are to do right, whether we feel like it or not.  And if being a Church is the best cure.  Why do I still feel so lousy when I do what I should.  Why is my anxiety 10 times worse when I go.  Why do I go home having been through the emotional wringer during preaching?  If we are to bring glory to God in our daily walk and the way we handle trials, why am I such a disgrace.  How can I accept and move on?  If there was some formula I'd be all over it.  I HATE feeling this way.

Instead I continue to grapple each day to make it through everything necessary, without any answers, hoping that one day the details of loss will fade like old photographs.

There was a baby lizard in our house, and I caught it on her tail.  Then we put her on Abigail's flower.  That baby lizard was so cute.  I named it Tiny Tiny.  I do have another friend lizard named Diamond, but it was way bigger than that lizard we put on Abigail's flower.  I can't wait to catch another lizard.  I might catch a different lizard or a different lizard.  There are a lot of lizards at our house.  I like them because they are so cute.  Yesterday I saw a lizard in the mail box.  The lizard was big, even bigger than Diamond, his name was Big Big.  I haven't named all the lizards yet, because I just got to this house, and I'm still looking for them all.

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh .,fmjdkdkdchdlk

Which being interpreted apparently says...
"Everyone else was getting to help with Momma's planner so I wanted to.  She knows I love ponies, especially My Little Ponies, and so she got me some stuff that I like to put on my birthday week, and I got to help her decorate yesterday.  It's almost my birthday, "eeeekkkkk!"  It is after Britt's."
Or at least it's something along those lines.

I have lots of plans to get my faerie garden ready.  I pulled out the weeds and picked up the dead leaves.  There are some flower pots for me to plant some flowers in for the faeries to see out one of their windows.  I can't wait for them to move into my faerie house.  I want to put it out today, because it would be so fantastic, but it's not ready.  I found crystals and moss, and I know faeries like crystals and moss.  So I'm going to keep all those little diamonds and pearls with my garden.  We are going to build something that we can put real flowers in and it go up on the walls.  I want to take the white thing and make it pink.  And we need to paint some more stuff out there, because it's losing color because it was there for a long time.  I'm going to have so much fun with my faerie house and garden.

Optimus Prime is my favorite of the transformers.  Heat Wave is my next favorite.  He is a fire truck.  And there is Bubble Bee too, and he speaks like this "buzz, buzz, buzz."  Just like a bee.  There is Blades that turns into a helicopter.  They fight 'ceptacons.  They turn into planes, but Rescue Bots, they turn into cars.  There is Chase, who is a police truck.  And Casey Burns is the chief.  Cody sometimes talks to them when they don't have to fight.  And there is Boulder who is a dozer truck, he can push alot of dirt or fertilizer or stuff.  He can also push alot of rocks at one time.  Optimus Prime is a semi truck.  He gave the rescue bots a mission to be a great team, to earn the respect and save people, because earth is their new home.  They can lift cars and alot of things in robot mode, but they pretended to be trucks.  They were from different planets until their home got destroyed.

I like transformers alot.  A few days ago, Momma got me transformer stickers.  I used them on my birthday week in her planner.  She said she'd leave them there forever.  We covered up all the pink on my birthday week, but only on my birthday week, not the other pages.  It's a kind of art, I treat it like it is anyway.  I like to do it with Momma. I hope she gets me a transformer's cake.

And Unca Nick and Aunt Alex got me two transformers for Christmas.  They were my favorite present.  And Donatello too.  He got me Optimus Prime and Sideswipe.  I like to pretend that they are brothers.

Flipping through the radio channels on the tv tonight, because that's how I use the tv as a glorified radio.  The money is totally wasted on me, we have tv for Gary.  Anyway, flipping through the radio channels tonight, I perked up when an Avalon song was on that came out back when I was in highschool, about the time a friend, Kristi I think introduced me to Christian rock, pop?  Whatever you call it.  It was a song I liked alot back then, the idea of being willing to testify or speak or praise God throughout my life, just like everything we see in creation.  Of course I was also in 7th grade when it came out, and thought the song had great positive feeling music, with great harmony.  However, when I heard the song again, a different set of words just blew me away, "I'll be a witness in the silences when words are not enough."

I have hoped in some small way, to live to see that Abigail's life mattered, even if it was a very tiny and short one.  If in someway she brings glory to God, in the way that we handle her loss, then ... It's not that it makes it better or ok in someway, but I suppose it helps to see good come from the bad.  And while I have tried so hard to sort through everything and make sense of everything that I feel by writing, almost obsessively you might say, the words are not enough.  Oh, I blog, sometimes I share snippets of things on facebook, I journal daily in my planner, and I have Abigail's journal.  I have lots of words, I supposed if I could ever get what it is that needs to be said, said, then I could just put up the pen.  The problem is the words are not enough.  They are never enough.

Recently a sister in the Church passed away, a woman I've never met but who lives in vibrant detail in countless stories that I've heard.  Someone who was like a sister to Gary's grandmother, a woman who they all call Aunt.  As we have talked and made plans to go up for the funeral, I wondered what I could say.  It brought the very real panic and feelings of losing Abigail back to the forefront of my mind.  The utter worthlessness of words at that point, the rarity of anything that is said penetrating the fog, and sticking with you.  The despair of hearing "I'm so sorry" over and over and over and over.  And yet we feel that we have to say something.  I wondered during a long drive what I would say, I wondered what I would have said to myself.  Maybe that is all we are really grappling for in these situations, words for ourselves?  Somehow hoping that what we think we would need is what others need.  Maybe that's why we stink at speaking to others in their loss before we experience it.  We have no idea what it is and what we need.

I have thought that what I would say is "It's not ok, but it will be well.  There will always be a huge hole, but that is ok too.  You will be lonely, but He never leaves us alone.  I know, because I'm there."  And maybe, others can see that, maybe when others look in, those silences say volumes.  Maybe the silences will speak to what words cannot.

Here we are rolling over into 2016. Sayonara 2015, you absolutely STUNK!

So, for a review of last year's resolutions.

• We did manage to reduce our debt, and cash flow unemployment, nearly all of the big move, and with the generous support of so many the burial of Abigail.  We didn't pay cash for the car, but the loan we took out was tiny.  It will be paid off just making the minimum payments this year, and the interest rate is so low that the bank will have made a whopping $11 dollars off of us.  I can live with that, even if Dave Ramsey wouldn't.  I am happy with how much progress we made on the debt.  Everything I had planned to do by the end of the year we were finished with in July, to the tune of $20,427.47.  For the most part I am happy with that.  We might have used about half of what Gary made this year, to get rid of debt.  Not too shabby since we also have 3 kids.  Of course with the layoff we didn't do much after that, other than to cash flow the move to the tune of $5,186.46.  One of the unspoken reasons why we wanted a bigger vehicle was to have another baby.  I suppose we made that goal too, even if it wasn't the way anticipated.

• I also managed to improve my time management.  It's an area I feel like can always stand to be improved.  My planner has been a big help in that regard.  (Seriously, that EC Planner has been one of the BEST buys I have ever made. If you think you are interested follow the link and you and I both get $10 off if you buy one.)  Gary tells me that I do ALOT, so I must be doing fine in that area, but I always feel like I don't get enough done, and I don't have time for so many of the things I want to do for all the things I have to do.

• I feel like I met the majority of my schooling goals over the spring, to finish out the school year.  This year was going really well for the first 2.5 months too.  We took off from co-ops in the spring, and only did one in the fall.  I was intentional about picking out field trips, and making the most of opportunities when we were job hunting with Gary, and staying on target when we were home.  We have addressed alot of character stuff, but as always new things crop up in their place.

• One of my biggest successes I think has been in handling my temper and interactions with the kids.  I have for several years now, tried to be better about not yelling.  And you know what, losing a child that you will never be able to say "I love you" to, makes not yelling at the ones you do have infinitely easier.  I still rarely lose my temper with them over defiance, and having to repeat myself a million times.  But I can count on one hand the times that has happened in the last 5 months, and it doesn't equal me yelling.  What burns me up now more than anything, is the rage I feel when I hear someone else screaming at their kids.  It is pretty irrational, but hey, try losing a child, and then we'll talk about my irrational anger with other parents and medical professionals.  But I digress, I continue to hope to improve, to better model what I expect behavior wise from my children, but I'm not going to list it on my resolutions next year.

• My biggest failing this year, has been with my Bible reading and studying.  I started off well with the Church's reading, but had fallen off the wagon by mid year.  My own studies have been sporadic at best, and I didn't really start with any of them till after we lost Abigail.