Mommy Confessional: Looking forward, Moving on and celebrating

      On tuesday, just 4 days away, Liam will be home for a total of 10 weeks (2 1/2 months) without a hospital stay or ER visit. This is a new record for us. The last record fell short at 5 weeks and that was through Christmas and New Years. Although we are NOT counting his surgery he had right before his birthday to replace his GJtube because he was only there a few hours.  The fact that he has a cold and is still home is AMAZING to say the least. The last time he cought a cold, it was January and it landed him in the hospital for 3 days.

      With this new record, I feel elated and over joyed and comfortable looking forward and planning ahead again. We didn't even plan too far ahead with his birthday. We knew we wanted to have one so set a date and procured a location and invited people. Behind the scenes, I was a nervous wreck. We waited until the very last minute to buy everything for his party. I spent the day before Liam party dragging my neice from store to store with me to buy everything we needed. You can't really blame us for waiting until the last minute with Liams track record. If something had gone wrong, all we had to do was call everyone off figure out how to consume 4 dozen cupcakes before they expired.

     So now I am truely happy to announce that I am planning Halloween already. I am looking ahead into the future for the first time in a year and I have to be honest. I am not being overwhelmed with anxiety or foreseeing scary events to come. When I look ahead, what I see is no longer a black cloud of uncertainty and misery but a bright future filled with joy and happiness. I can easily think of how i'd like the holidays to turn out. I can finnaly plan crafts that will turn our home into a spooky haunted house or winter wonderland.

The entire last year of holidays was planned out on the thought "how do I make this holiday good if we end up stuck at the hospital?". Last Halloween we did spend in the hospital and thanks to family we had 2 foux pumpkins and 1 very large real pumpkin. We also used Lanie travel lightbrite to create a glowing pumpkin. Instead of carving the large pumkin, I drew George the giraffe, Childrens Hospital mascot, and we taped it to the front. All our pumkins were displayed in the window for everyone passing to see.

Liam doned a pumpkin hat I purchased at the gift shop. On the day of Halloween, I modified his costume by cutting holes for his wires to go through. I was determined that my little man would wear his costume on his first Halloween. Lanie dressed up in her costume and got to go trick or treating with all the other kids. According to Lanie, it was the best Halloween ever. I think its because she ended up with 2 huge bags of candy. And as much as I enjoyed seeing her glow with happiness, I would prefer to have this years Halloween out of the hospital.

So costumes are being planned, crafts ideas are being thought of and trick or treat routes are being mapped out. I am thrilled to yet again have a chance to sit down and create something. I just hope I'm not setting my sights to big :)