Control

First off, I want to say how incredibly grateful and touched I have been by the outpouring of love and support for me, for my family, and most of all, for my niece, Emma.  She's on prayer lists, the subject of positive thoughts and hopes, had candles lit for her, healing prayers at synagogues, you name it.  It means more to me than I can say.

My brother has set up a CarePage for her through Mass. General, so click here if you want to look at photos, leave a message, or get a status update (I'm also putting a button on the blog sidebar to the right).  As I write this, she is in stable condition.  The big thing the doctors are monitoring is the pressure in (on?) her brain.  The next few days are critical, and she has been sedated so that she and her brain can stay calm and have the best possible chance of healing appropriately.

But, the truth is, we have no way of knowing what will happen or whether she has sustained any brain damage and to what extent.  I'm trying to stay positive, but I'm terrified and I spend much of my day choking back tears.

The other big news is that Jason finally finally was transferred to a job back in Denver, meaning he will be living at home full time and I will no longer have to function as a single parent.  We're so happy to all be under the same roof again, and it will be so much easier for everyone.  For Jason, no more 100 mile drives through snowy or icy mountain passes, no more coming home during the week only to hang out for an hour and a half, go to bed, and then get up at 3:30 in the morning to go back to work.  He can finally get to know Josie, who up to this point, he has seen only on weekends.  For me, no more days of never having a free minute, of always being on duty.  For Zeke and Josie, time with their daddy.

It also means that it's time for Jason and me to retake control of our marital bed.  In the months after Josie was born, Zeke started crawling into bed with us more and more.  He's sweet and snuggly and it was easier to move over than to fight it, so we didn't fuss about it.  And when Jason was out of town, it was nice to cuddle up with him.  And then eventually, we dropped the pretense of putting him to sleep in his own bed, so now when it's bedtime, he just crawls into our bed and we read stories and then go to sleep.

We could have picked the battle and made him go back to his bed, but decided to wait until Jason was back in town.  And now he is.

We've known the day was coming soon, so I've been trying to prepare Zeke for it, talking about how he's a big boy now and big boys sleep in their own rooms.  And we already know that I'm not above bribery, so we talked about how we would pick out special sheets and blankets and set up his room with tap-lights on the walls so he could sit in bed and look at books if he wanted to.

My mother is always cool-headed in times of stress, and emphasizes dealing with what you can control and not worrying about what you can't control.  Obviously, I'm going to worry about Emma even if I can't control what happens to her.  But I can control the bedtime situation with Zeke.  So I spent my day buying Thomas sheets (a.k.a. "crack on a track") and putting up lights so that Zeke has this to look forward to:

__________________________________________________________
*Oh, and what of that firetruck bed, you ask?  Yeah, apparently the novelty wore off pretty quickly.  He still likes to play on it when friends come over, but displays very little interest in sleeping in it.