The 6 month mark.

So I think one of the hardest parts about this all is that there will always be aniiversaries, always be days where we are reminded where we are "supposed" to be with Declan. Just over a week ago we reached 6 months. He would be a 6 month old baby right now if every thing had gone as we planned it.

This is a time where you always see parents posting on facebook things like "I can't believe my baby is already 6 months old!" and "time has gone so fast". Well, we didn't get to make that happy post. Instead we spent the time leading up to it trying to figure out what we were going to do to celebrate his birthday. It was hard to think of what to do because it wasn't the happy occasion it's supposed to be.

But we decided to celebrate the way we would if he were here with us. We put flowers on his grave and went out to dinner. We took the night off of school and work and set aside some time to be together and to catch up. Lately we only see each other for about an hour a day and Mark is usually doing homework during that hour, so time to actually catch up and talk is hard to find.

Two days later, Mark came home with a present. He works at Deseret Book and is always surrounded by awesome church stuff and I would pretty much buy everything if I were rich ;) But he had a really awesome idea. He had been with the missionaries the night before teaching a man who has a baptism date set. He only has the Book of Mormon and during the lesson Mark had the thought that this man needs all the scriptures. He then had the realization that Declan needs his own set of scriptures. The next day he bought two small travel sized sets of scriptures, one for this investigator, and one for our son.

He engraved a set with Declan's name and brought it home. It was the perfect gift idea. Declan is a missionary after all. So we added it to our little collection. I love that he came up with such a meaningful gift idea to celebrate our son's 6 month birthday.

And then we moved some stuff into storage. We had family coming for Thanksgiving and needed more room. So we moved the millions of diapers, dressers of clothes and some toys to a storage unit. I didn't expect that to be so hard seeing as they were just being placed somewhere else and not being sold to never see again, but as I started moving stuff to the front door, the tears started streaming. It was a change. The first change we have really made in the nursery in 6 months. Until then everything had been the same as when we arrived at the hospital, except for the memorial things we have put up on the wall above the crib.

It was a hard week but we got through. Things are getting harder as we get into the holiday season, which are supposed to be a time of nothing but joy and have also become a time of sadness for us as we wish that we were experiencing the joy of a first Thanksgiving and a first Christmas with our baby. But there are still things to be grateful for and joy to feel.