Cloudy Days and More Baby Talk

Clouds...
We're learning more details about our friend's death and his state of mind in the days before. (See Last Post) It still doesn't make sense. I'm not sure it ever will. Right now we're struggling to find a new sense of normalcy and do whatever we can to support his wife and their two young children.

I'm both looking forward to and dreading Saturday. I'm having such a hard time with this, all I can hope for is that seeing his face one last time will help me gain some closure so I can trudge through this grief to be of some use to his family. I want so desperately to be strong for the kids and for Nikki, but right now I feel like my presence will only make things worse.

My brother-in-law is also having a hard time dealing with all of this - he feels so guilty, like he should have known something was wrong and done something to change the outcome. He's so devastated to have lost one of his best friends - who was also his co-worker, car pool buddy and neighbor. He needs prayers for healing just as much as Al's immediate family does.

Sigh. I don't pretend to understand how this all works. I'm still trying to figure out God's plan. He must have needed Al, but doesn't he understand that we still needed him to? Maybe, His plan is for us to learn something from this tragedy. Hopefully we'll find out what that lesson is...I think it would really help us to make some sense of it all.

As we struggle with all of this we still have responsibilities, duties, goals in our own lives. It's weird to be planning for the future, going to work, buying groceries, etc. when our hearts are grieving...but we've got to continue living.

On to the Baby Talk...
Last night, Mark and I met with another builder. That's five so far. They've all got copies of our blue prints and our preferred materials, so they'll start sending out the plans for bids. We should start getting a few of the bids in later next week, so hopefully we'll be able to get some idea of where we stand financially. We'd both love to be able to build this year, but I'm just not sure it's possible. We both make enough money and we've been able to save, but my employer has some financial trouble and I'm not always being paid on time. The overall cost of the home and the prospect of looking at a mortgage with a very high payment, is pretty scary.

I also don't want our building a house, to hinder our plans to have children. I'd rather buy a fixer-upper and be able to have kids and build later than build now and have to put off having kids for a few years. Life is just too short and our parents both so desperately want to welcome a new grand-baby into their lives...I just can't see putting it off. Now that we've got a bunch of baby furniture to go with our stock pile of "hand me down" clothes, I'm yearning for a baby more than ever!

Lately, I've been obsessed with smelling diapers. Lol. I know, weird. I was invited to a baby shower a few months ago, but the weather was bad and the drive was pretty long so I didn't end up going. I sent a card and decided I'd just keep the gifts I'd bought - including some newborn swaddlers - because I'll surely need them some day. The diapers are sitting on top of a tub of baby clothes stacked near our computer. Every once in a while, I'll grab the package and take a whiff of the lovely "baby" smell. Mark looks at me like I'm nuts, but he agrees that they smell good - in the package, not necessarily on the baby.

A friend of mine began stocking up on diapers for several months before her baby was born. According to her logic, diapers are expensive and it was more practical to buy them little by little than incurr a big cost all at once. It's a good idea, but my mom reminded me that I was allergic to a certain brand of diapers when I was little and you never know. It would be awful to buy a ton of diapers of a given brand only to learn that your little one is very allergic and the diapers can't be used.

Lately, I've been reading a blog written by a cloth-diapering mom. The Cloth Diapers of today are nothing like those of yesteryear and it's something I'm definately considering. I'm very big on recycling and doing what I can to make sure I don't add to the growing piles of "stuff" in the landfill, this really seems like something that would be very do-able for us. It will take a little more convincing to get Mark on board, but I've already explained the process to my mom (who will be our main babysitter, I'm sure!) and she seems pretty excited about the idea and willing to try it. I'm going to do some more research and emailing with some moms who are "going cloth" before I make a final decision...I have some time!

I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but Mark and I already have both a boy and girl's name picked out. We actually decided on them after we had only been dating about seven months. We laughed at the time, figuring we'd change our minds but almost four years later...they're still our top choice! We won't tell family or friend (or bloggers!) what the names are ahead of time because they are both family names (honoring a family member) and want it to be a surprise. However, since Al's death we're toying with incorporating some part of his name as a middle name for one of our future sons.

It's very important to us that we don't forget what a wonderful man he was, and we'll be very sure to tell our children that their "Uncle Al" loved them before they were even an idea! He'd always tell Mark that he couldn't wait till we had kids so he could spoil them and dote on them as much as we did/do his children.
Sigh. I miss him so much. Love and prayers....