Thank you so much for the pictures and video! He has the most beautiful complextion ! How could anyone not love those rosy little cheeks and his big blue eyes. He is a keeper! I can remember you at that age, holding you and rocking you to sleep was one of my most endearing memories about you as a baby. I remember thinking - this little munchkin is so amazing and bright and God managed to package all of these wonders that we called Megan into one little baby body. Well the apple does not fall far from the tree. You and Matt Sr. make beautiful babies!!! I think that he was well worth the wait. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for sharing these pictures. I save them and pull them out when I am having a horrible pain day - his little baby face makes me feel better. Just looking at him and remembering you and my own three when all of you were as little as he and I have to smile. Treasure this time because they soon grow up andbegin to talk which leads to eventual talking back (such is life).
Take care, tell Matt hi, and give my little angel boy a kiss from his great aunt who promises to love him always just as I have loved his mother!
hugs and kisses all aroundAunt Cathy"
My Aunt Cathy sent me this email on Tuesday September 9th. A week later she passed away. Another loss in my family. She was my mother's oldest sibling and her death rocked my family, the grief made that much stronger by the fact that it's only been 3 months since my mom passed away.
She loved my son, as made evident by the email in the beginning of this blog. Most people (okay everybody) called her a baby hog. She once took a job at a daycare in the afternoons not to make extra money but to have babies to snuggle. When she visited me in the hospital after I had the baby she wanted to know if she could go down to the NICU and rock some of the babies there. She also made sure the nurses knew what they were doing when it came to taking care of her niece and her great-nephew.
This email and the others I have by her are especially important to me because the fibromyalgia she suffered with made her hard to understand in person. Her words would be slurred and she would tell you the same things over and over not realizing she had already told you. But in these emails the clarity came through. There were glimpses into the woman she was before the pain took over.
She called me once or twice a week since I had the baby always wondering about every little detail of him. Did he enjoy his baths? Did he smile if you made funny faces at him? How was he sleeping? She told me story after story about me as a little girl and her own children growing up. She had three children pretty close together and recently told me how her middle child, David, complained that all the pictures of him he was in the swing. She roared with laughter as she said, "I had two children running around and I was tired and pregnant again, I had to know where one of them was!"
She consoled me after I felt like such a bad mommy the day Matthew rolled off of our couch. She told me that babies get hurt a lot worse when they start walking around and walk into things. She then told me the story of the time one of her children fell down the stairs after she just told her husband to be careful. And how she came home one day to find her husband taking their oldest child, Sarah, to the emergency room because she had dropped a brick on her toe. She said she was furious with him for letting her play with bricks.
I cherish these stories. Once again I have learned the hard lesson of not taking time spent with family and friends for granted because we just aren't guaranteed tomorrow.
When Matthew was a couple weeks old Aunt Cathy and her youngest child, Mary, came up to visit me and the baby, well mostly the baby. She was so excited to be here and to get her hands on him. She would even time Mary to make sure she didn't hold him too long. I'm glad she was able to come and spend the day with us.
Right before she left she was laying on the couch with the baby sleeping on her and she said to Matt, "Matt, quick, grab the camera and take our picture, it will be the cutest picture." She captured a moment in time I will always treausure. Most likely it was one of the last pictures taken of her, and on a day where she was so happy, doing what she loved best. Baby hogging.
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