Dear John Paul,

I am watching you sleep and I just want to tell you how beautiful you are.  Each of your little parts are so incredibly sweet.

It's been a busy week and I don't feel like I have been able to spend as much quality time with you.  I'm sitting 5 feet away from you, and I miss you.

The big news around here is that we are preparing for a really big storm--I have to admit that I'm pretty nervous.   There's just so many things that need to be considered and I just have to pray to my guardian angel that everything will be remembered or realized before we have a problem. 

I'm really not good with dealing with things in the future...I need to learn to just do what I can and to entrust the rest to our Lord...who takes care of things far better than I can anyway.

Nonetheless, I'll be glad when we are on the other side of this week...on Thursday, you'll have a busy day of getting your Flu and Synagis shots in the morning and then on to a neuromuscular cardiologist in the afternoon.  Your other doctors thought it might be a good idea to see this doctor sooner than we were planning because you have had some strange, unexplained drops in your heart rate.  The occupational therapist came this week to adjust your hand splints but she felt your hands were more swollen than she had seen before and didn't feel comfortable splinting.   While I know we need to go to these appointments to get to the bottom this and make sure that you are ok...there is a part of me that would rather just curl up and hide and have someone come and get me and tell me when we're done.

But life isn't just riding out one storm after another....we can't be afraid to put our heart in it.  We have to engage and know that the pain is worth what we gain in loving.  John Paul, I love you and you are worth it.

I love you more today,
Mom

Dear John Paul, 

Happy Birthday!  You have officially been a 10 month old for 3 hours now.  I can't believe in two months you will have graced us with a whole year!   You have been very busy since I last wrote you...you have attended your first of Joey and Liam's soccer games and even saw Joe score his first goal....we were going to try to go to a soccer game at the Height's today but it got cancelled so we went to a cool park that has ramps for all of the equipment.  You got to sail on a pirate ship, explore a castle, take cover in a log fort...not to mention watch daddy swing on the monkey bars with all your siblings hanging on him!  Tomorrow the boys have another game but it's usually a "see how the morning is going" kind of call so I'm not sure if you'll make it to this one or not.

I love you more today,

Mom