Perspective

Kate has not been napping well the last couple days - she'll talk and sing and run back and forth in her crib, but will not fall asleep. Because of this, she's been pretty cranky in the afternoons and kind of generally driving us crazy. Yesterday, she didn't nap at all and also didn't get to bed until close to 9 PM. I figured she'd be really tired and would sleep in this morning, but shortly after I got up to feed our dog (who will wake us up by 5:30 AM if she has not been fed yet), I heard Kate yelling from her crib "Sadie - is that you, Sadie???" Paul and I tried to ignore her for a while until she started yelling "Dada, Mama, I wanna get out!" See - generally driving us crazy....

I went running with a friend this morning and afterwards, we went to get coffee. On the way to coffee, we ran into a man and his two sons who my friend knew because the guy's wife was a close friend of her sister's. We chatted with them for a few minutes and when we got back in the car to go home, my friend told me that this guy and his wife had had a daughter too. She was two years old and woke up one day throwing up. They figured she had the stomach flu, but when it didn't get better, they took her to the doctor, who admitted her to the hospital. They ran all kinds of tests and when they did an MRI, they found out she had a brain tumor - she was dead within three days. Stories like this make me physically ill. I don't know how people can survive that.

There is a woman in my neighborhood who was in the middle of a nasty divorce - her husband had a history of mental health problems and she had tried to get his visitation rights terminated because she was afraid about his mental stability. About two months ago, he took the kids for visitation and didn't return them. He had taken them to a hotel in Baltimore and drowned them all and then unsuccessfully tried to kill himself. The kids were 2, 4 and 6. I don't know how that woman gets out of bed in the morning. I bet she wishes her children were not napping and waking up early in the morning....