Monday

Today's Monday and, as always, I'm sad my weekend home with my family has ended...just a few more days, and we do it all over again!

On Saturday, we went to Golden Corral for Jim's birthday dinner (he loves it there!) Brooke at SO MUCH. She loves it there, too.

Other than that, we didn't do much except enjoy the first football weekend. Well, first NFL weekend, anyway.

Brooke is learning new things like crazy. She's added theses words recently: yellow (lello), baby (ba-bay), buh-bye (ba-baye!), Grandma (Ma-maw)...... Now, when she's hungry, she goes to the kitchen and brings me a jar of her baby food. She's also walking, consistently, across the living room.

A while ago, I posted about this whole community of "heart moms" that I found in the blogs - most of the ones I follow are moms with babies that suffer from a severe heart defect called HLHS. This was something I never knew existed. I knew congenital heart defects existed, obviously, but never that there were people living with 1/2 a heart, basically. I never knew about the three stage surgery, never realized there are babies (newborns) who go through heart transplants. I feel like I should have known, because, logically, it makes sense that the defects would be in varying degrees - but I never did. And I can't stop reading their stories. I feel for their parents, because I can only imagine how hard it would be to watch your child go through that, but I also admire their parents - because they are so strong. I know that the babies make it all worth it, but how tough it must be.....and these babies have so many obstacles to overcome.

Today, there are several babies undergoing their surgeries. Bodie is having his second surgery, and a baby just born on Thursday is undergoing his first in the series of three. Please keep these babies, their doctors, and their families in your thoughts & prayers. I know they would all appreciate it.