Grief

As for grief, you'll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you're drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it's some physical thing. Maybe it's a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it's a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.
In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don't even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you'll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what's going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything...and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.
Somewhere down the line, and it's different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O'Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you'll come out.
Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don't really want them to. But you learn that you'll survive them. And other waves will come. And you'll survive them too. If you're lucky, you'll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.

Three years. It has been three whole years since I last held Ellie and told her I was sorry. This year was easier than the previous two. The waves are getting smaller and farther between. Most days I function just fine, but there are still days that are filled with pain, tears, and regret. I don't know that the pain lessens over time, but I have gotten used to the constant ache and so it's not as debilitating as it once was. I love you my angel Ellie. Each year gone without you is just a year closer to having you back in my arms. 

The Sick Bed

Nothing drives up Scott's anxiety like a good stomach bug. He shifts between paranoia that he will catch it and start throwing up himself (something he does not handle well) and the fear that someone will throw up on furniture or carpet. With that being said, let me tell you the story of our first night in our new house.
After closing on our house there were a few projects we had to get done before moving in. The last step was getting new carpet installed throughout the house. As soon as that was complete the movers delivered all our stuff and we got all of the big furniture in place. We hadn't unpacked any boxes yet and weren't planning on spending the night yet, but the kids begged and begged to sleep in their new beds so we figured, why not, and stayed for the night with next to nothing available to us. After tucking all the kids in bed Scott and I walked around the house admiring the new carpet and Scott said, "The first kid who throws up on this carpet is out of the family." We got a good laugh about it and went to bed. In the wee hours of the morning we woke up to little footsteps coming down the hall and Brynn's voice in the doorway saying, "Mom....my tummy hurts...." followed by a gagging noise. I have never seen Scott move as fast as he did as he bolted out of bed, across the room, and spun Brynn around just as she started vomiting uncontrollably all over the hall floor. Thank goodness the hall has laminate flooring which conveniently still had large pieces of cardboard taped down on it from the movers. I was super disoriented and couldn't figure out what I needed to do in this foreign place without as much as a washcloth available to help me clean up. As Scott started rummaging through moving boxes to find towels I took Brynn into the bathroom to shower off. I turned on water and waited...and waited....and waited for it to warm up, but it never did. Scott abandoned the towel hunt to go down to check out the water heater and low and behold the pilot light was out and would not relight. Perfect. I got Brynn cleaned up the best I could in cold water and then she and I went to camp out the rest of the night in the main room, far away from the precious new carpet. Scott located the boxes of towels proceded to cover every square inch of carpet in the boys' room just in case one of them woke up sick, which thankfully they didn't. In the morning we packed up all the kids and drove back to my parents' house to get Brynn cleaned up and figure out what was going on with the Gas at our house. Turns out when we called and transferred the service to our name they had accidentally shut off the service instead. What a memorable night.
Since that day, Scott has implemented some new protocols in our house for when anyone gets sick. I'm pretty sure it has been more ingrained in our kids what to do if they ever wake up sick at night then what to do in case of a fire or earthquake.
When anyone does get sick they are confined to "the sick bed" which is a bed Scott sets up on the laminate floor in the living room. If needed, additional sick beds can be added to create an infirmary for the sick. From there they have quick and easy access to the bathroom without any carpet or upholstery in their path. Every person in the house is equipped with a pink bucket by their bed and the carpet around everyone's beds is lined with towels. This procedure is followed until every night until several days have passed with no incidents.
I am happy to report that by following this protocol we have made it an entire year without cleaning vomit out of carpet. Crossing our fingers we can make it a few more.

Towhead

Before Scott and I had kids we often wondered how our genetics would combine with him coming from a family of blonde hair, blue eyed Scandinavians and me coming from a family with Dark features. When Mason was born with a head full of dark hair I kind of figured the dark genes had won and we would have a family of Hale look-a-likes. Then Brynn came along with her lighter features and we deemed her our little, blonde, Murray girl. That is, until Miles was born and proved to be even lighter, making Brynn's hair appear to be more brown than blonde. So Miles became our blonde haired Murray. Sure, little by little his hair has gotten darker over the years, but it is still lighter than the others'. Than along came Ryan who has shown us what it truly means to be blonde.  

There is no questioning that his blonde hair and bright blue eyes win him the title of the family towhead. Unlike the others that gradually got darker, his hair just continues to get lighter and lighter. He's only one or two shades away from having white hair. As I look at the line up of our kids and see how each one seems to have a shade lighter of hair it is as if our genes are running out of pigment to pass along. We love our neopolitan family (dark brown, light brown, dirty blonde, auburn, and blonde blonde) and wouldn't change a thing about any of them.

Piles of hair after giving all the boys haircuts.