A grave marker for little bean.

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This weekend was full of so many emotions! Friday morning, I got a call from my mom saying that my brother and his wife were on the way to the hospital to deliver their baby. I waited for updates all day, but it was a slow process, so I tried to be patient! Our power went out at work that morning, so I spent the bulk of the day writing thank you's for people that have donated and/or purchased a necklace. I was running on adrenaline all day, trying to get all my things done before leaving work. That night, I worked on more thank you's, and Brandon edited a vlog. We had a nice night, just hanging out, still waiting for updates on our little nephew. Finally, at 10:43, he was born, and I officially became an aunt! And guys, he is the cutest!

Saturday morning, we woke up early to drive to Logan. We hadn't been to visit the babies in a month, so it was really nice to get up there and do some maintenance. We cleaned off the headstone, trimmed the grass around it, reorganized the toys, and made a makeshift lanyard to put the babies' pins on. The weather was perfect, and we were able to spend a lot of time with them without freezing or being too hot. It will be winter in Logan before we know it haha. Then we went to go have lunch with Brandon's parents and brother to celebrate his mom and brother's birthdays. After lunch, we ran to Hobby Lobby real quick. We had bought some football stakes to leave at the cemetery, and accidentally forgot them at home, so we just decided to buy some more and leave them that day. When we went back to leave the stakes, we decided that the lights needed to be cleaned, so we took them to Brandon's parent's house and got them looking new(ish) again! We had the birthday people open their presents, and chatted for a while, then left to go back to the cemetery one last time.

About six weeks ago, we finally ordered a grave marker for Little Bean. We spread her ashes at Carter's grave, and we wanted to get something to let people know that she is there too. The marker came just after our last visit to Logan, so for the last three weeks it has just been sitting on our counter. It was nice to finally leave it, but it also made my heart so heavy. Some things just really solidify the idea of everything we've gone through, and this was one of them. It breaks my heart to see not one, but two of our children's names in a cemetery.

Needless to say, we stopped for Aggie ice cream before driving out of town.

That night we borrowed the neighbor's dog and went for a nice, long walk. It was a little cooler than we had anticipated, but it still felt good to get out after sitting in the car all day! Brandon was up late that night editing a vlog, so we slept in Sunday morning, did laundry, got some groceries, and capped off the weekend with Costa Vida. Yesterday afternoon, before we left the house, we were able to video chat with my brother, his wife, and their new baby! We chatted for about an hour, and talked about how their last few days had been. We are so excited to go see them and meet our cute little nephew! He is the second grandbaby on my side of the family, and I know that he is going to be so spoiled. There are a few similarities between him and Carter (namely their big feet and head of hair) that pull on my heart strings and make me the happiest mama/aunt at the same time. 

All in all, it was a good weekend. Our visits to the cemetery are always tinged with sadness, but we also appreciate being able to be with our babies in whatever capacity we can.

ALSO. You guys are crushing it with Flying for Time!! We are so close to meeting our goal, so let's keep it going! Thank you so much for everything!!!

 

What today should have been.

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I did a silly thing a few weeks ago and let myself get excited about the pregnancy. You all know how much we love Disney (too much, probably), and at the end of April we had booked a trip to Disney World so we could announce the pregnancy and gender there. We had the whole thing all planned out: Mickey balloons, a just celebrating pin, and cotton candy. And in my head I already knew it would all be pink. I wanted to take the picture in front of the castle, since last year we announced we were having a boy in front of the ferris wheel in California Adventure. We were so, so excited.

We're supposed to be at Magic Kingdom right now riding Pirates. I just got the notification for our fast passes.

After the visit with the specialist, we decided to cancel our trip. We would have hated to be so far away from our doctor if anything happened, and we decided that even if we lost her before or after, the trip still would have been a little hard. Of course we still would have had fun together, but I know I would have cried every time I saw a pink Mickey balloon.

When we were discussing how we could announce the pregnancy at Disney, Brandon was pretty adamant that we don't use the balloons since that is how we announced Carter's gender. I think he was nervous that if we planned to use the balloons, it would be a boy, and then it would have been pretty much the exact same picture as last year, minus the background. Isn't that so silly for me to have to say? Last year. Our official due date for little bean was November 8th, six days after Carter's due date last year. We found out we were pregnant with her a year and one day after we had found out we were pregnant with Carter. And, had we been announcing the pregnancy today, we would have been sharing her (and her gender) with the world 363 days after we shared Carter's. I kind of loved that we were on the same time frame as our pregnancy last year. It makes me feel like both of our babies were already really close. There was a short period of time where I was super stressed about how we would do Carter's birthday with a newborn. We would have been induced at 37 weeks, so about a week and a half before Carter's birthday, and I didn't know how we could properly celebrate him with the restrictions of a new baby. I would give anything to still have that struggle.

Please don't mistake my sadness and grief for depression. I think I mentioned some in the post about losing our little bean, but there are a few things that make this round of loss a little easier than the last one. I'll write about them sometime. It's funny; some days I feel like I can only talk about all of this emotionally, and other days (or minutes, really) I feel like I just talk about it intellectually, with facts and no emotions. I'll write about the bright spots when I'm feeling more intellectual and not emotional.

I think I'm still going to go buy pink balloons today, because I was really looking forward to buying baby girl her very first Mickey balloon, and her first set of ears. The ears will have to wait, and so will the Mickey balloon, but she still deserves some pink balloons, just for making our lives that much brighter while she was here.