Every Day Is a Gift.

It’s been one heck of a week.  You all may have noticed I’ve been light on the blog posts; I definitely haven’t been there emotionally for a number of reasons.

The Newtown tragedy has shaken me to the core, as it has for most of us.  I’ve done my best to try not to watch too much coverage, when I do, I pretty much collapse into a bumbling mess of tears and it’s just not healthy for anyone around me.

I shared on my Facebook wall, but when I was in 8th grade, my school district had a school shooting.  My sister was at the elementary school where it happened at the time and a 7-year-old boy died.  It was an awful time in our lives and I think the combo of having been through that, being a Mom, being from a town in CT not 15 minutes from Newtown makes swallowing what happened overwhelming.

As if any of us can ever really come to terms what happened.  Sometimes bad things happen and I really believe that’s just no way to justify it or make sense of it.  There’s really no sense to be had in what happened last week.

That night, Cole (my own 6 year old) was hurt at a party.  A vase fell on his head and we rushed to the ER at 10 pm with rags full of blood that we pressed to his head as we tried to control the bleeding.  As I ran into the ER with him in his arms, I thought, my God.  I sat and held his hand as they gave him 3 staples to his head and all I could think was, “thank God he’s here – thank God he’s alive.”  Obviously Newtown was close in my mind.

Then, after a weekend of craziness, I got a call yesterday that my sister’s water had broken.  She was 36 weeks pregnant and off to the hospital to have her baby.  She’s had an incredibly rotten pregnancy and everyone was glad to see it end for her sake.

So.  Today brought the world this.

Meet Shepard, my perfectly perfect nephew.  I am dying as I’m in Philadelphia and my sister and her family are in Cincinnati.  We’ll meet Shepard after Christmas and I’m already dying to get there and madly in love with his cuteness and perfection.

Every day is a gift people.  Today I’m feeling so very blessed to have a new nephew.  I’m feeling blessed to have two healthy and happy children who are alive, breathing and laughing in my house.  And I’m praying and thinking constantly of those Newtown parents as my soul is cracked wide open in sympathy and pain for them.

Every day is a gift.  Cherish it.  Be thankful for it and appreciate it.

And welcome little Shepard.  Your uncle, aunt and cousins in Philadelphia love you so much already and can’t wait to meet you.  We wish you a lifetime of love and happiness and I hope from the bottom of my heart that the world you grow into is a peaceful and safe one.