On Easter weekend last year, Tess took a turn for the worse. We had plans to see Kat’s family, as they kindly included us in their Easter plans, but had to cancel. Tess went from slightly pale and sluggish to multiple infections and a red blood cell count that required three transfusions in 24 hours to stabilize. She went from high-flow oxygen to re-intubated in under an hour, and scared the crap out of us. It scared our nurses even more. They’d warned us she’d probably get an infection at some point so we foolishly thought this was par for the course. I remember multiple people telling us that

Next Easter will be better, and this will all be a bad dream.

At the time, I didn’t buy it. How do you ever move past a moment like that?! And yet, as we got up with the kids this Easter morning, neither Dave nor I thought about that moment. In fact, it took a note from our buddy nurse Lexie to jog our memories! So much life has happened this year, so many milestones and so much progress, that Easter weekend last year feels as far back as Easters from university days. So the toddler who punctures tomatoes with her teeth blades (don’t let her bite your finger!), who hollers for us or against us, who giggles and contemplates her little brother, this toddler came that far. As much as the last few weeks have been about celebrating Remy’s arrival, today I’d like to send a huge shout-out to our daughter the miracle.

We spent Easter with family, with brunch and an egg hunt in the morning followed by a family dinner extravaganza that night. (I just couldn’t – it’s too easy.) Adam and I were remarking on how our energetic crew is moving a little slower these days. As he said,

If I didn’t know better, I’d think we all partied hard last night!

Kids will apparently do that to you. Still, watching Grace play with Remy’s toes and share her Peep on a stick with Tess, I smirked a little inside. Whoever would have thought that my joy lay in coming home and building a life in Milwaukee, raising my kids alongside the brother I never got along with? Who would pick that over life overseas, travel and singing? Me apparently – I don’t regret a thing! Life is odd.