Warning! Suck-y blog post ahead.

After school today, the girls asked me if we could get down some boxes that they have on the shelves in their closets. I said ok, and we headed upstairs. The boxes they wanted to look through are their baby boxes with little things I kept from their babyhood. We got Briana's down first. I open it and spot some finger paintings she made when she was two. She laughs and looks at them, and then we pull out her handprint plaques. Those hands were so little! We flipped through her baby book oohing and ahhing over her cuteness. She even found a two dollar bill tucked in between some cards.
Next, we opened up Sydney's box. The first thing I spot is a roll of wallpaper from her room in our old house with fairies on it. She doesn't remember it, but she smiles and says it's cute. Then I pull out a tiny pink hat that doesn't even fit half of her head anymore. She giggles at that. Then I spot about 18 white folders. And a white binder. And a read book about childhood cancer. I get a pit in my stomach. These are all filled with medical information and print outs of her white cell count. I pull out the journal I kept for Sydney while she was in the hospital, and she flips through it. I can't bring myself to read a single page. I pull out her baby book and we attempt to look through it, but it's only filled up halfway. Because I didn't want to put all the bad stuff in it from when she was in the hospital. So it has occurred to me six years later that my baby never got to be a baby. And that just sucks. Don't get me wrong, I am so incredibly grateful that she is here with me now, HEALTHY and happy. But she didn't get to be a baby. And we will never get to look back on that time with light hearts. She doesn't deserve that. Neither do I.
I know I could look on the bright side and say I will never miss another opportunity to tell her I love her. Which I won't. Or I could say how I now know how fast your world can crumble in the blink of an eye and that's why we should live every day to the fullest, or some crap like that. But, right now I'm just mad. Mad that we even have that stupid box in her closet. And mad that her baby book will never be filled. And mostly I'm just mad that Briana gets to be two dollars richer and all Sydney gets is a print out of blood counts. Where's her two dollars?
Ok, I'm done now.
Happier posts later today.