Can't sleep...

I wish I knew what was wrong with me, but I have no idea lol! I've been icky (think flu-like) for the past 4-5 days, but that's not it. Noah has been running a fever of 104 since last night - thankfully, Motrin is helping. I am so tired, but my mind is just whirring.

While trying to get to sleep, I started thinking about old friends. I tried in vain to find them on Facebook, but I just keep hoping that someday soon they will reappear out of the blue :) I'm totally missing the two Gingers that I got to know in 2001 when we were planning our weddings. The three of us met online at Wedding Channel, and got married over 3 weekends. I actually got to meet one of them around the time I had Max! Maybe it was that fall? I just can't remember right now. Then there is an old friend that I haven't talked to since Ellie was born. I think. He's a local radio guy, and he and his wife are just amazing! I really want to find him, too!!! Another one is a wonderful, wonderful woman I met on Ovusoft, right around the time we got pregnant with Max. She always remembered his birthday, but we lost touch a couple years ago. At one point, for his birthday, she sent me the most gorgeous bracelet with his name on it. Rivka, if you read this, I want you to know that I love you and miss you dearly, and that bracelet is probably my most prized possession!

In the past, I might have wondered what it was about being pg that makes me so sentimental. Now, I know that I associate all of these amazing people with the part of my life that included Max. I feel so blessed to have recently found several other friends that I had been missing, who I also got to know during that time. But that in itself is almost bittersweet... I'm SO glad to see them again, and am LOVING getting to catch up, but it just keeps bringing back memories that I kinda like to shelve while I'm pg. Oh, heck with that - I always like to shelve them, but when I'm pg, I'm just more emotional when they surface. Needless to say, the past several days have had me in tears about Max more times than I can remember. I haven't missed him this deeply since we had Ellie and she kind of helped fill that Max-shaped hole in my heart. Or maybe even since his 2nd birthday, when he was all but forgotten by so many people. Not the ones that matter, just the ones who were on the outskirts of my life.

I had such a wonderful pregnancy with Max! I was part of a fabulous online group, and several of us had babies around the same time. We used to chat almost every day, and it was so much fun! I was so full of joy and hope for the sweet baby I was carrying, and so full of plans for his future. I wondered what he would look like, what color hair he would have, if any, and I even prayed that he would have beautiful brown eyes, just like his daddy. Everything was so perfect then! We bought our house when I was 7 months pg, and I painted nearly the entire insides of the house in the 2 weeks between closing and moving in. I set up a beautiful nursery for him, and my MIL bought him a gorgeous crib. I found the sweetest Noah's Ark bedding, and sewed a coordinating extra long dust ruffle that touched the ground when the mattress was at it's highest level. I also made a crib organizer, a memo board, and pads for my rocking chair. I smocked a sweet daygown for him, we shopped for baby Raiders things when we got to go to Oakland the fall I got pg with him. I bought a moses basket and made a liner for it - with little cars and trucks all over it. I sewed cloth diapers for him, that he actually got to wear a few times. I dreamed about him, thought about him during the day, and thought it was downright hillarious that his 3rd birthday was 6-6-06!

Then he was born, and before we knew what happened, he left us. Oh, the memories of that day! I can't stand to think about it right now! It is all way too vivid! The worst part was having to tell everyone. All my online friends found out either in chat or by email, or from the journal I was posting in back then. When I got pg with Ellie, I still visited my Chatties some, but it was so tough. Not long after I had her, I totally stopped chatting with my friends. You know, the people who had been there and had shown us so much love throughout all of this. Rivka sent things several times over the next few years, and each time I wrote a tear-stained thank you note that never made it to the mail. I know I was a pretty bad friend, but as I'm finding each of these amazing ladies, they have acted like it was nothing.

Noah isn't sleeping well tonight, either. I hear him upstairs in his room, moving around, occasionaly calling for Mama, or for one of his sisters, and knocking on the door. I just want to go up there and grab him and hug him tightly. I hate knowing that he's sick, and seeing those little red cheeks just makes me melt! I want to go upstairs and kiss all my babies, but I know that would just wake up Madeline, and would keep Noah from going back to sleep. They are my light sleepers. Ellie and Audrey would have no clue that I had even come up there lol! Now Adron is awake, wondering where I am, and I really should go back to bed. But my brain is running a mile a minute. I can't lie down and be still. My eyes refuse to close. My pillow is worthless. I want a mattress that isn't so old and worn out. I have stuff to do tomorrow. I need to find a way to get rid of the kids for a day so I can fulfill an obligation to recruit 40+ judges for a project at Madeline's school. Just people in the community, businesses, etc., but I have no idea how to get that many people. So I probably should send out an email to our awesome PTA board and see if any of them can help. I need to type up the minutes from tonight's meeting. I can't make it to the membership function we are having tomorrow, and I'm the membership chair. I am sure that someone I really like really hates me right now, and I don't know how to fix it. Nor do I know if I really care. Well, I do, but enough to worry about it? Obviously so. I have a meeting with Audrey's teachers on Thursday morning, and I need someone to watch the babies so Adron can be there to back me up. I'm totally stressed about the meeting, and I really hate that school. I don't want to send Madeline there next year. For that matter, I don't know where Audrey is going to go next year, as the high school we are zoned for is horrible!!! Saturday is the Tiger's homecoming, and not only did our mascot die last week, but we are also playing a pretty good team. That stinks. My computer seems to think that my 750 gig external HD is empty. All my digital scrapbooking stuff is on there. I have no idea what do to fix the situation. And about 52 other things running through my brain along with all of these.

And I wonder why I can't sleep...