2011

I can't believe it is already 2011. Time passes and I don't even realize it any more. Some times I feel like I'll always be stuck in 2009.

Hailey's and Sydney's birthdays are coming. They'll be here before I know it. It is really hard to plan for both at the same time. Regardless of how we celebrate Sydney's birthday, the sadness still prevails. I have to try so hard not to let the anticipation of Sydney's birthday put a damper on Hailey's birthday. The only thing I know for sure is that the five of us will visit the cemetery to release purple balloons and then visit the Butterfly House.

January 1st also marked 5 months old for Kelsey. How can she possibly be 5 months old already? It amazes me. She's getting so big. As of December 17, she was 12 lbs 8 ozs and 23 1/4" inches long. I know, really, she's still tiny. But to us, she's so big. In 5 months, she has gained about 8 lbs (her lowest weight was 3 lbs 10 ozs) and grown 5 inches. She recently started rolling over, she babbles all the time, and she's the happiest baby.

Christmas was great. As Christian said, "This was the best Christmas ever!" He says that every year, but it still makes me feel great. I have the best kids and I love spoiling them on Christmas. We also found a little girl who is the same age Sydney would be through a friend and we bought her gifts for Christmas. Last year, we picked a baby girl off the Angel Tree, but it was nice to know a little more about the girl we were buying for this year.

I'm still on the roller coaster of grief right now. This is a low time for me, this period between Christmas and Sydney's birthday. Last year I had a lot of distraction with traveling for work and then finding out I was pregnant with Kelsey. There isn't anything coming up that will distract me much. But as I know by now, most of the time the anticipation is worse than the actual day, so I think I'm just going to work on planning her birthday so I feel like I'm doing something.