Procrastination?

Normally when we go to Ryan's folks' place for weekends/holidays, I keep dirty clothes in a completely separate bag from where the clean stuff is packed and throw that bag straight into the laundry machine when we get home. 

Our suitcase is still sitting on the floor, waiting to be unpacked, from Memorial Day weekend.  We've put Ari's clothes from around the house away, temporarily, but we can't seem to get to unpacking the suitcase.  I did pull out most of Tanner's stuff, but there are perfectly serviceable clothes of ours in there that we just aren't touching.

And there's at least one dirty item.  It's the only thing we have of Ariana that still smells like her.  It's the hoodie that she wore for about 15 minutes on the Sunday night before Memorial Day after her bath.  And it still smells like her.  So we pull that out ever so often, and then put it back in its place in the suitcase, on the "girl side" (as T calls it), and underneath a couple of Daddy's shirts that got shifted around in the melee following her death.

I really want to unpack that suitcase.  It's been two months.  I just can't seem to drag myself to do it.  We have plaster casts of her feet and one of her hands that one of the pediatric nurses helped make for us after Ariana's death.  Sometimes, stupid as it sounds, I hold her hand and her hoodie.  It almost feels like she's home.  Almost.

Yep. 

We are quickly approaching a string of first birthdays.  Scratch that, the first one was yesterday.  A number of girlfriends from high school/college/life had  babies right around the same time as Ariana.  I bet there are probably a dozen acquaintances/friends with ~1 year old babies.  Mostly girls, I do believe.  I thought it would be really terrible but it turns out I can imagine Ari's first birthday party.  Which of course we are still going to have.  Just without presents, and without a cake and frosting covered baby. 

As Tanner would so succinctly say...

Poop.