Hailey's Tree

Despite how hard yesterday was, or maybe because of it, last night before I went to bed was the first time, for me, that I really feel like I felt Hailey's presence. I felt like she was there giving me a hug and finally felt some peace. I was so grateful for that and hoped that it could carry me through the night and into the next day.

I really wanted to have a happier day today. When I woke up this morning I didn't get out of bed right away because the house was quiet. If the kids were up they were playing nicely. This is normally a time when I would have loved to close my eyes again and try to go back to sleep, taking full advantage of the quiet. It is different now. Quiet is not good. I immediately began to think of Hailey and how if she were here I would most likely be awake feeding her or would have finished and snuck her into bed with me. But I did not have a baby to feed or to snuggle with. I realized that if I continued to lay still my day would not be any better than yesterday, so I grabbed my scriptures and read them for a while. Then I grabbed my journal. I am behind in recording all that has happened over the past two weeks. I wrote in that for a while and then Nathan appeared. My saving grace. I no longer had to find something to fill the quiet. Before I got out of bed I thought about the peace I felt last night and decided that I would work really hard to keep that peace with me today.

Our friends the Montierths offered to come get the kids and take them to their house to play for the day. I don't feel like I need a break from the kids, but I think that it is a much needed distraction for the kids to go play with friends. They had a great time. Thank you Montierths.

While the kids were gone Aaron and I drove all over Ft. Myers looking for Hailey's tree. We have been given so many beautiful angel ornaments from friends to decorate Hailey's Angel tree with. We can't wait to get them on the tree. It took us most of the day, but we finally found a tree that we felt was Hailey worthy. We put it up tonight, but didn't have time to decorate it with the ornaments so hopefully we will do that within the next couple of days.

Overall I stayed fairly happy today. The problem I think is that I just didn't allow myself to feel today. Anytime I felt the sadness coming I immediately changed thoughts and pushed the sadness out of my mind. I'm not sure that is a very healthy way to deal with the grief. I don't think that suppressing it all the time is going to make things better. However, for today it allowed us to have a day that somewhat resembled our old "normal" life. For today it was nice.