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Monday, June 13, 2011

Keeping Occupied

Another week down...its absolutely crazy how quickly time can pass and feel like its standing still all at the same time.

As I said in my last post, Matt and I loaded up the pups and headed back to Omaha for the weekend. While it doesn't make things "easy," its sure easier than sitting in our house wondering what to do with ourselves. And even with lots of distractions, our baby girl is never far from our minds.

Lately Matt and I have been doing a lot of the things that we "wanted" to do over the past year....

I used to wish that I could stay awake later than 9 PM, but most nights I was exhausted from early mornings, work and our nightly routine of dinner, meds, baths and playtime. Now I'm awake until midnight...1 AM...sometimes as late as 2 AM. I just can't seem to shut my brain off and when I close my eyes my thoughts consume me. Sigh...I miss my tired, early nights.

I remember just wanting ONE DAY to sleep in. Now I don't drag myself out of bed until 9:30 or so (maybe because of the point above). I wake up expecting to hear cute little baby babble over the monitor, only to see it sitting on the night stand in the "off" position. Sigh...I miss my morning wake up call.

We have been going to movies--as a matter of fact, I have seen more movies in the theater in the past 2 weeks than I had in the previous year. Each time we go I get this feeling of guilt. How can I go and sit at "Bridesmaids" and laugh for 2 hours when my baby girl just died? How can anyone do that?! Sigh...I wish that I was back watching movies on Netflicks.

We have gone golfing, eaten out for lunch/dinner more than is probably good for us and even had a night out to watch our brother-in-law's band play. All things that would have required a little more planning before 2 weeks ago.

All of these are temporary distractions. They keep us from going crazy. They fill our time, but cannot fill the emptiness that both of us are feeling. They are the things that we thought that we "wanted" but were perfectly content without because in their place we had beautiful Charlotte. Sigh...what I wouldn't give now....

6 comments:

  1. Even though I only knew baby Charlotte for a short time she was still a very speacil little person to me and i want to thank you for letting Sylvia's child care take care of Charlotte. I will always remeber you and your family I will always keep you in my prayers ...one more thing i could say is that little miss ritchie has earned her golden wings over and over again.
    Emily Dorsett

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  2. Our Thanks to you,
    Kristen and Mathew,Thank you so very much for allowing us to give care to Charlotte care, She was such a joy to have in our child care.We all loved her smile,her laughter,her beautiful eyes and her loving attitude and sometimes the way she looked at you,she was a preciuos little angel sent from god.Charlotte was a blessing in many ways,we loved seeing her each and every day.
    Kristen and Mathew: Everyone in our child care loved and enjoyed her presence every day.Kristen thank you so very much for calling us and letting us know about her passing, I know it was so very hard you.Kriten and Mathew we all know where baby Charlotte is today in heaven with Jesus and she is spreading her love and joy every where,Charlotte has earned her wings and they are pure as gold because she was a blessing to every one she met.Thank you Kristen and Mathew for being so faithful and for being such a blessing to our child care.Kristen thank you so much for the praise you and Mathew gave our child care on the care we gave baby charlotte, it meant the world to Rich and I. Thank Mathew and Kristen for coming by to visit Rich and I it was such a blessing to us.Charlotte was so precious to our hearts,the joy was all ours for Charlotte sharing her life with us, she will be missed dearly. With all our love and prayers
    Rich and Sylvia

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  3. Our hearts ache incessantly for you every day. We love you so much. I hope you won't think we're nagging when we mention support groups; please feel free to tell us to shut up :) They did, however, save our lives. Much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much love.

    Shawna, Joe and Miranda

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  4. And blogging is a REALLY good idea!

    Love, Shawna

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  5. Kristen & Matthew:

    My name is Nick Tierney, with HealthTheater Networks. I just discovered your blog Little Miss Ritchie: Keeping Occupied, loved your content, and thought we might have something to contribute.

    We are a top health video production company with several videos about different aspects of cardiology--all featuring real people telling the story of their personal battle with the condition. In fact, we just filmed a few new powerful stories on heart murmurs and arrhythmia in teenagers.

    Feel free to check out my favorite one here: http://www.healththeater.com/video/Paroxysmal_Supraventricular_Tachycardia_PSVT__Eriks_Story_id486.html?playlist_id=259

    We are interested in syndicating these videos through our player to your website, for free, in exchange for the targeted visibility that exposure on your site would provide.

    In addition, we recently attended the 59th Annual Mended Hearts Convention, and we are interested in growing our library of video content with more CHD stories. If of interest to you, would you be willing to share video content about your story with us?

    If interested, could we please schedule a short call to explain further?

    In the meantime, feel free to FOLLOW us on Twitter: @HealthTheater and LIKE us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/HealthTheater/207647009259593

    Thank you,

    Nick

    Nicolas Tierney
    ntierney@dramatichealth.com
    Dramatic Health
    45 Rockefeller Plaza, Suite 2000
    New York, NY 10111
    Office 212 332 7132
    Mobile 203 912 6179
    http://dramatichealth.com
    http://healththeater.com

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