Another Wave

Here are a few pictures from my first week of the year.

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday-morning

Thursday-night

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

You can see, I had a pretty great week. By Thursday I almost started to think that I might need to think of something else to do, other than sitting and watching the waves, taking deep breathes of the fresh salty air. I was grateful each day for the beauty that surrounded me and the time to be able to take it in. I had started to wonder, is this it, is life really going to be normal? I really did even start to think that maybe our life was so stable that I needed to add to it. Is it time to take some classes, get a part time job, volunteer? Yes, I get three days with two hour increments to do nothing and I think I need to go back to work, noted, I am crazy. Of coarse,  when I got the call from the school that Claire stopped breathing for longer than normal and threw up a little I thought better of it. Then came Friday. I took Chloe out for apple juice at my favorite coffee shop. She picked out three books to bring in and read. That is when it hit. Like a giant wave it crashed on me, the grief, it was all too good. It wasn't this good when Claire was two. I never took her out to coffee to read stories on a Friday morning. Every Friday she had an hour of physical therapy first thing, then we worked on other things, but we weren't out, just having fun. I do take her out and we do fun things. Monday's picture was taken after we went out to the same coffee shop, only she gets whip cream, not apple juice. Then we took a walk down to the water and she had a major dystonic thing, so I sat and held her for 20 minutes while she recovered, then we walked on and eventually took the cute smiley picture. I so badly want it all to be good, but it isn't. The more that I think about it I see that as the challenge for the next year, to enjoy it and hate it and roll with it as it goes it's own way. As much as I hate it, rett syndrome is a part of my life, my really awesome and wonderful life, and it might just take forever for me to figure out how to balance that, but I might as well keep trying.