Today is the day I begin to write about the "new normal" as my therapist calls it. The new way I wake up every morning, the new way I fix breakfast, give baths, shop for groceries, and prepare for halloween. And then today, as every other day, another new.

Doug and I took the kids to Red Robin for lunch. It was a great day. Sunny, productive and family focused. You see, Rockettes is over now. I am now home in the evenings, awake on Saturday mornings and availble for baths and books again...if they'll have me. Not yet, they're used to daddy's way of bedtime, and I just seem to screw it all up. Except, now I'm back and they'll have to get used to me again because Doug's Hockey season is starting...my turn! :)

So we walk into RR when the nice high school aged hostess looks at us and says "are there only four of you today?" My heart sank. My stomach dropped and I had to keep it together. For Scotty. The other day I had a melt down. A house fell on me. I walked into a brick wall. My cookies crumbled...how ever you want to define it. I lost it. I cried so hard It scared me. It had been awhile since I let it out like that. Rockettes kept me "focused" "driven", I don't know for what, but it kept me occupied. And now, well now, I get more time to think, to react and to cry. Scotty walked into my bedroom right as it was hitting me the hardest. And he freaked out. "Daddy...Daddy...somethings wrong with mommy. Mommy are you ok? Whats the matter? Are you sad about Steph?" He knew. When mommy cries its about Steph. He's 5 and he knew.

So, I had to control myself in RR. "Are there only 4 of you today?" NO! There are 5! There should be 5. We were a family of 5, now I'm a family of 4-beautiful, sweet, loving family-but there are now only 4. The entire lunch, as I sat in the booth with an empty seaty next to me (Scotty had to sit with Daddy-remember...he's the man right now!), and Sara in the high chair, I wondered what Steph would have been saying to Sara. What would they be coloring? Would she be annoyed that Sara broke every crayon in the first 5 minutes or would she have offered to run up to that sweet high school hostess and ask for more? I'll never know. But I believe she would have strutted right up to the young woman, asked for more and told the hostess her silly little sister broke them all; and giggled all the way back to our booth...where I would have told her how proud I was of her and kssed her cheek.

And, she would of looked at me and said "MOOOOMMM"! All annoyed.

God I miss her. I'm broken-just like the crayon.