14 months

Kara is 14 months old today. I was watching her play last week and I started thinking about how much I had forgotten about this age. It's exhausting on a good day to try to keep up with her endless curiosity and energy. Somedays it's just impossible to keep up and my house looks like a wreck.
But don't worry, Kara will do the dishes if we let her.

But I think this time around I really don't mind. For one thing, I know that she'll outgrow it. For another, I know how much I'm going to miss this age. There is nothing as wonderful as having that little face smile at me without reservation because she thinks the universe revolves around me. I love her innocent hugs and cuddles and kisses that she'll gladly give without any eye rolling. She is just so sweet.

She is also very enthusiastic about everything. She wants to do anything that we are doing. She'll try any food (unlike my 5 year old who is sure that only pasta and bread are edible). She is also a little chatterbox. I guess my kids are getting progressively more talkative. Julia was pretty quiet as a 1 year old. Adria started talking pretty early. But Kara, oh my goodness. A week or two ago she started using two word sentences. It's crazy. This morning I got her out of bed and the first thing out of her mouth, "Where Julia?" I said downstairs and she pointed and said, "Julia!" So we went and found Julia. Kara adores her big sister. She cannot get enough Julia time.

Some other words Kara uses regularly are: num num (for food), cold, hot, Dede (for Daddy), Mama, night-night, more, all done, uh oh, hi and hello, bye-bye, thank you (when she wants you to take what she's holding) and my favorite, love you. I'm sure there are more that I can't think of on the spot.

Her newest word is "knock knock." She just learned it and laughs hysterically at herself once she says it. She picked this up from Julia who is constantly telling us knock-knock jokes. I'm pretty sure it's the cutest thing ever.

Well, maybe her singing is the cutest thing ever. She sings the "My Little Pony Song" really well. Not the words, but "la la la la." I need to upload the video of her singing in the car. So sweet.

She's also a climber. Not as much as Adria, but she still manages to get into stuff. She's really good at pushing the little chairs next to the big chairs and getting on the table. Luckily it's really loud on the tile so we always know what she's up to.

Oh yes, do you see her wearing Julia's play necklace? This little girls LOVES to be "pretty." She'll bring me any jewelry, bows, ribbons or dresses she can find and ask me to put it on, "Pretty?"

We love our little Kara and are so grateful for her sweetness in our home. She just brings smiles to us every single day.

Sharing some feelings

My mom sent this picture to me today. They finally installed Adria's headstone.

I really love how it turned out.
But I couldn't help but stop and think about where we are 7 months later. In one of my classes at BYU they talked about grief. I can't remember if it was the textbook or the professor who said that grief over a loss like this never gets less painful. The pain comes less often as time goes on, but the pain is still as sharp as it was in the beginning. That's how it has been for me. Some days or even weeks will go by without any tears now. But some times something will trigger that pain and it just hurts so bad.
I think Julia feels the same way, although she is young enough that I think she's forgetting all the reasons why it hurts. The other night I was putting her to bed and she was looking at the pictures of Adria on her dresser.

She started getting really sad. I asked her what was wrong and she said, "I never got to teach Adria all of my dance moves. She really loved dancing and she would have liked to learn everything I'm learning. I wish she was still alive so we could dance together."
I'm sure you can imagine how well I kept it together. I tried to think of a way to help her feel better, but the truth was that she was right. Adria loved to dance with her big sister. And I wish she was still alive too. So I told her that. And I promised that we would try harder as a family to make good choices so we can all be together again someday.
And we have tried harder. We're doing much better at scripture reading. We haven't missed a night in 2 weeks. We were having a hard time getting everyone together, so we started doing it at dinner. Whoever is done eating first (Ben or me) will start reading. It's working really well for us.
I think the hardest day for me was about a month ago. Ben had taken Julia and Kara so I could get some things done around the house. The shoe basket had been totally overflowing. I knew that there were a bunch of Adria's shoes in the bottom. I thought I was ready to clean it out. So I took out all of Adria's shoes and Julia's shoes that don't fit any more. There were a few matching sets. And I totally lost it. More than I usually do. I was really angry that Adria wasn't here to wear matching shoes with Julia. I looked at those piles of shoes and I could remember all the places she wore them. All the times she lost them. I remembered how I never would put Adria's shoes on until we got to our destination because she would NEVER leave them on in the car. Adria hated shoes. I started thinking about all the times when she got hurt because she wouldn't keep those shoes on. I remembered taking family pictures at Thanksgiving. I love this picture:

It is so Adria. She has no shoes and she's getting as close as she can to Julia.
So I cleaned out the shoe basket. Then I cried over some dirty shoes. And then I started yelling at them. I can still feel how angry I was. I just wanted Adria to come back. It isn't fair. Her birthday is going to be on Easter this year. It's great that it will be on the day we celebrate the Resurrection, but I don't want that day to come. I don't want to deal with her not turning 4. I see all these toys at Target or wherever and wonder what she would have been begging for if she was here. Where would we have her party? How long would her beautiful hair be?
I have to stop. Sometimes I just can't think about all the things I'm missing because I think I might never come back from the grief. I don't post about this very often because first of all, there's a lot more to our life than missing Adria. And second, when I put my feelings into words it makes me cry a lot. But I wanted to write this down so that one day Julia or whomever can look back and know that it's okay to hurt. It's okay to hurt a lot sometimes. But after you hurt you have to pick yourself up and move forward. So we move forward each day and instead of thinking about how each day is taking me farther from the last time I held her, I think about how each day is taking me closer to holding her again.
But like I said, most days now we are fine. We are moving forward and trying to do our best.

Michigan

Well, it's time to catch up on some blogging. I've spent most of my free time during the last month either chasing Kara, cleaning up her messes or editing an amazing new book by my aunt Rebecca Belliston. I really enjoyed that and so I let it kind of take over the rest of the things I was supposed to be doing.
So, let's back up. A few weeks ago it was Julia's spring break. Since we get more than our fair share of warm/hot weather we decided to go somewhere cold. We went to visit the Belliston family in Michigan. We had such a great week! Julia was really excited to go see her cousins that she barely remembered.
Kara was really good on the 7 hour trip out and back. She didn't love being stuck in a confined space, but she took it in stride.

She was really excited when the plane took off!

Here we are out enjoying the Michigan spring sunshine.

Julia was excited when we found boots for Kara so they could be matching. So cute!

Ben and Becky teased me lot. I tried not to feel cold in the nice 50 degree weather, but I guess I've become a wimp. I started shivering. Oh well.

Julia with all her cousins:

We walked down the fun main street of Milford. Julia spent her money on two princess toys. She loves them and still plays with them all the time. Then the Bellistons showed us their favorite bakery. Yummy!
This is Julia with her unicorn-shaped sugar cookie.

Kara loved hers too!

We spent a lot of time just hanging around the house enjoying our week off. Julia loved having someone around all the time.

We happened to be there over Julia's "half birthday." She and Jacob made some cupcakes to celebrate.

After the rest of the kids got home we all went to "Bounce" to have some fun!

Kara loved every minute of this.

Julia is a little daredevil! You can't tell very well in this picture, but it was a really long drop! She did it over and over.

Ben even got into it!

The next day it was time to go. The girls were both really good on the trip home, too.

I was grateful that they slept for most of the flight to Phoenix.
We really had a wonderful time and we were sad to leave. Maybe if we leave AZ someday, we'll move to Michigan!