5 months, 7 months....

Yesterday was Christian's 7 month birthday and the Sunday before that was the 5 month mark of him leaving our family.  We visited his memorial marker yesterday.  It got installed in February, FINALLY, wow, what a loooooooong process that was.  But it is finally in and it looks very nice.

we put flowers there for February...here it is in February....

here it is yesterday...March 18th

oddly, maybe, our kids have always liked cemeteries. kendall takes them on jogs, and i think that's what it stemmed from...they jogged by a cemetery once and wanted to go in and look at the graves and flowers and flags...and then every time they jogged by for a while they went to visit that cemetery.  so they are very comfortable with cemeteries. i was originally worried about how they would react going to visit Christian but i knew it was something we needed to do as a family...but i shouldn't have worried. they always surprise me, and most often adjust faster than i ever could.

the most challenging part of going is just making sure that Blake leaves the ornaments in the vases of the different graves.

 we are doing okay. i am a conflict in terms, i want our family to never forget but still be able to move forward. not move on because we will never move away from him. we will always have Christian with us wherever we go, he's part of us and always will be. i want other people to not forget too, but then it's hard to talk about still. i avoided my bank for a while after Christian passed away. they talked to me about him, smiled at him, talked to him etc. so i was afraid that they would question where he was and so i went to a different branch. but then i felt like enough time had gone by so i started going back, and it was just more convenient. i went to the bank last week on friday, and the lady who helped us saw the kids running around...
 her: you have three kids?
me: yes
her (pointing to blake): how old is he? ( i could tell she was confused)
me: he's two (getting ready to deal with this situtaion)
her: but he's not the baby, i remember you had a baby....
me: no, our baby passed away 5 months ago...(try not to cry in the bank...)
her: i'm so sorry.
me: me too.

and then we were done and could leave. so at the same time that i am scared people will ask, i am scared that they won't ask. does that make sense? i earned four children, i worked hard for them, it was work to get them here, and there are only the three precious ones here. sometimes i feel like i should wear a sign "i really have four"

 anyway, just some issues for me to work out. but i feel like time is helping. at the same time that i hate the distance from the time that Christian was with us, i can feel that i am healing, slowly but surely. some days are better than others, of course.  i really appreciate the sweet emails and texts that i have received randomly from friends and family. it helps us know that we aren't forgotten and that people realize that this pain is large and deep and is not ever really going to leave us.

we love you Christian, thank you for being such a sweet, darling boy.