It’s shameful how long it’s been since I’ve written. Really shameful. So much has happened that I haven’t remarked on. The babies celebrated their first birthday on October 5th. As I expected, I went completely over the top and stayed up into the wee hours of the night creating party favor buckets that no child wanted or would ever want. I stopped at one point and actually recognized how ridiculous this whole thing was. The babies wouldn’t know the difference. The party was fun and I was emotional and struck by the time moving and how different everything had become. Since then, I’ve been genuinely thankful that the birthday has come and gone because for some reason, it has allowed me to sort of let go of the whole birth and them as infants thing. As you may recall from ALL OF MY POSTS, I have a tendency to long for the past and romanticize it a bit. Celebrating their first birthday-their first major milestone-has allowed me some peace with the whole “time moving” thing. I feel more present.

Then November came and everything went downhill. I was scheduled to get my wisdom teeth removed the second week in Thanksgiving (apparently I should have done this fifteen years ago but oh well). Following the removal, I developed an infection in my jaw and ended up checking in to the hospital for a week. I had surgery. I went home. The infection got worse. I checked into a second hospital and had surgery again-two days later. I stayed there for half a week. Then I finally came home for good. I was highly medicated-even when home-and somehow managed to finish the semester and complete my finals. The whole thing was utterly horrible. Painful beyond belief, scary, lonely, and uncomfortable. Both surgeries required me to have drains put in my cheek that emptied out into a changeable bandage. I fluctuated between severe depression and horrific anxiety on a regular basis. And worst of all? I missed my babies and my family so much. It was a really terrible experience and one that I reflect upon because it provides me with such strength (now) and such a sense of “everything changes in an instant”. I know that in the grand scheme of things, I was fine, but at the time I didn’t know that. Several doctors mentioned putting me in ICU and nobody understood what was actually going on with me. I remember several extremely dark hours in the middle of the night just wailing all by myself in the hospital room. Add the constant 24 hour morphine drip, it was madness. What do I have to show for this time? A pretty gnarly scar under my chin, a slightly altered smile and an appreciation for every moment of healthiness that I and the ones I love are given.

Moving forward, I promise to make this blog funny again 😉