Bela Girl

Bela is doing great!! I feel so much weight lifted each day that she continues to get better. You can just feel the difference in the atmosphere around our house...it is so much different lately than it has been for the last 7 and a half months. While there are things that are still very hard, things are much better. I of course will always worry about Bela as her future is still very unsure, but I don't feel that constant, sick to my stomach worry that has been my companion for the past year or so since we found out about her delicate condition. It was actually almost exactly a year ago from right now that we found out. It has been a long road, seems like FOREVER ago, but it is SO wonderful to be where we are at. She is just really coming alive latley and is so interested in checking everything around her out.. She is laughing now but Benson is usually the only one that can get her to laugh. It is a beautiful sound to hear... I love to see her happy, I longed for it... Bela...

Tonight I feel so happy. It is a result of having a moment to myself tonight to reflect on the 25 years of life that I've lived, and in particlular, the last almost 3 years that I have been a mother. As a child, I always dreamed of being a wife and a mother, so much so that when I got a little older I remember including my future husband in my prayers... that he was trying to live a good life in hopes of meeting me, like I was for him. I dreamed of my children that would one day be mine... I didn't know what they'd look like or be like, but I knew that it didn't really matter, I would love them. I didn't plan on having a critically ill baby, spending months in the hospital, or the pain of watching her suffer, but life never ends up just like we planned it to. And that is okay . Those four little words have taken me awhile to say and then to really believe them. It's okay because, although it's not what I'd planned, it's not bad, just different....