Tim has explained our lives now and our journey with Theo after losing Noah as a place where Joy and Grief walk hand in hand. Somedays there's more Joy, somedays there's more Grief, and somedays they collide in a full speed, head on collision!

Today has been the latter.

We have just a bit over 7 weeks until Theo makes his grand debut into this messy beautiful world.
His nursery is almost finished, we're just working on the finishing touches and we're now moving onto the things we need such as clothes, diapers, bathing things, etc. We have a lot of Noah's clothes that will be passed onto Theo but they've been sitting in the nursery closet since the day Noah passed away so we weren't sure of what we had and what we needed.

The day Noah passed away my parents drove down and while Tim and his mom went out to plan the funeral, my parents and myself packed up all of Noah's things, put them in the nursery closet and shut the door... It was too hard to see them, knowing Noah would never be coming home to use them. Occasionally we'd find a little sock or mitten that had been lost in the wash and we'd immediately bring them up to that closet and shut the door again.
Somedays I'd open the door to the nursery and look in as the sun beamed through the big window and wonder what would have been but it was to hard to leave that door open.
So there, in the closet of the sunny little nursery, Noah's things have sat.
We didn't know if we'd ever pull them out again and until Theo we tried not to let them cross our minds.
But now as we prepare for Theo's arrival the time has come to see what will be passed onto him from his amazing big brother Noah, and to see what we still need to get him that will be all his own.

I pulled everything out of the closet today and the hardest part, besides finding Noah's NICU Bunny was the clothes. I was doing ok for a little while, going through all of the unworn newborn clothes. The clothes that were purchased in the hopes that our beautiful Noah would someday be coming home; But instead, the clothes that Noah's baby brother Theo will wear...

I slowly took each item out of the bag and laid it carefully on the carpet trying to keep my composure but feeling it slipping with each little onesie... and then Anni got up from where she was laying beside me and laid down on Noah, now Theo's clothes... and I lost it!

Does she know? Does she feel it too? The Grief of losing Noah colliding with the Joy of meeting Theo, as Tim says, "They walk hand in hand"