This week is over! And it’s been a good week – but a busy week and I’m glad it’s the weekend. The kids have a full week of school under their belt and they all did pretty well. Sophia loved school on Monday, but cried a few times on Tuesday. Wednesday morning I had to put her crying on the bus, but I didn’t feel good about it, so at 9:30 am I drove to the school to see how she was. My plan was that if she was happily playing that I would just turn around and go home. But her class was still outside and I could see that she was holding her teacher’s hand and when she saw me I could see that she had been crying, so she came home for the day.
When I asked her why she was crying Sophia said that water kept getting in to her eyes and making her cry…. you know the irritating water that finds itself in your eyes. 
I told her that the water was probably her tears, but she was pretty adamant that it was just the water… and missing mommy. If things had been different for us, I honestly think that Sophia would have gone to school happily this year and not looked back. But this year was different and Sophia clearly has some anxiety and separation issues and I don’t see any reason to push her. I know she will get comfortable eventually, but for now we are just happy to let her take her time. This morning when she didn’t want to go to school we told that today was the last day of the week and then she would get 2 days off for the weekend. And her response was, “Two days? Not eight?” No, not eight Sophia, little turkey.
So back to our busy week – Tuesday, Jason and I had a wonderful day in Toronto. It was so good to go back and be in the place where we spent most of our time with Ava. And it’s funny how things can change in a year… last year at this time we were making day trips to Toronto for Ava’s echocardiograms and my high-risk pregnancy clinic visits and we didn’t know a soul. And now when we go it’s like we are going to visit our large extended family.
Jason and I weren’t sure how we would react going back up to the 4th floor at Sick Kids, I hadn’t been up there since the day after Ava died. But but when I stepped off the elevator so many memories of Ava flooded in that I started to cry. Thankfully before we even made it to the Ward we started meeting people we knew and after getting some hugs and starting talking I couldn’t cry anymore. Can I just say how much I love our 4D nurses? And it was so cool that all the nurses we had the last few day of Ava’s life were there on Tuesday and it was so good to see them again. They gave such love to Ava and so much support to Jason those last days that they will always be in my heart. In fact, I feel like all the staff of 4D have become part of our family and we are so blessed to have them in our lives. And they make me laugh, and they helped keep me sane through those tough times with Ava, so I will be going back to visit them for a long long time.
We also were able to spend time with Tanya and baby Britton and we saw Aleeda! Oh sweet Aleeda. She looks amazing and her hair has grown a ton since her transplant and she has grown too – but she is still tired and still isn’t tolerating her feeds and so she is still in the hospital. Please keep her in your prayers, and pray for her parents Tanya and Brian too as they just want to see progress for Aleeda so that they can see home in their future. You can imagine they aren’t looking forward to spending their second Christmas in the hospital, and it’s very very tough right now to not see huge improvements after Aleeda’s heart transplant. But I know that they know that God has a plan for Aleeda and their lives, and they will continue to remain faithful no matter how hard it gets.
We also went back to our other home-away-from-home… the Ronald MacDonald House. And we saw the staff again and met with friends, and it was wonderful to reconnect . And it’s strange, because we lived there for so long that you might think being back there would feel weird, but it doesn’t. It just felt very familiar, and I guess it felt just like being home. Our home away from home.
And then we were back at our real home with our kids and to make the week more interesting we had Sarah’s diabetes clinic Thursday morning. She had to go to clinic every three months to make sure everything is OK, and I’m happy to say that she is doing great and I think I will give it her own blog post, so stay tuned.
Otherwise, we are doing OK. We all have times where our hearts just ache and I don’t think that will ever go away, but we have each other for comfort and I praise God for our family. And our friends. Two of my dear friends brought this too my door yesterday….
A sweet birdy necklace for me to wear to always remember my sweet little Birdy. And it has five leaves to represent our five children and even looking at it now makes me teary. It is a beautiful gift.
Which reminds me of the first verse I ever learned… James 1:17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
We know that God is the giver of every good gift and once again, even in this busy week – we’ve been blessed.
