You know, grief is really weird. Like really, really weird. And what we’re learning is that it doesn’t get any less weird the longer you live with it. I’ve had a lot of thoughts swirling for the last two months and have spent a good bit of mental capacity trying to streamline them into words that fit together to make sentences that make even an ounce of sense. Not just for the sake of writing them down for anyone else to read, but also to better understand them myself.
(If you’re looking for the full story of Kamri’s life and medical journey, you can find it here. Since she passed away, I’ve been chronicling our walk through grief and you can find all of those reflections here.)
It’s been a trickier year for that than usual, as our season of “heightened” difficult emotions happens to be colliding headfirst with a season of heightened joy. This go around, we’ll have encountered Kamri’s 6th birthday (Dec. 28), the day she died (Jan. 20), and the birth of our last baby and second girl (Feb. 1) all within the span of just over a month… 35 days to be exact. I counted. 🙂 It’s A LOT. And yes, it feels like as much of “a lot” as it sounds like, but I also think that this little microcosm of seasonal experience is an unexpectedly accurate depiction of what grief looks like (for us), six years later… it’s a whole big mess of all of the life experiences; both the joyful and sorrowful ones. It’s everything all wrapped up together.
While that can be beautiful, sometimes it can also make it tricky to process, to untangle one thing from another. We see and feel it in the moments where we’re doing something we always dreamed of, like taking our family to Disney World last February in honor of her 5th birthday, while remembering standing in the same places after escaping to “the happiest place we could think of” after she died. Or when we’re celebrating the milestones we experience with other kids (ours included), while still painfully dreaming of what it would have been like to get to see them also happen for Kamri. Or, like over the last few months, trying to separate the grief of losing one child from the joy of welcoming another. Or even, to separate the realistic fears of an upcoming delivery from the past trauma-laden fears that just come from having been down this road before and having it not turn out like we thought or dreamed it would. Those moments.
There is some compartmentalizing that has to happen with this wild mix of life and to some extent, we can do that. Other times, it can feel near impossible. But I’m going to try, for the sake of my own ability to grasp it all… I’m going to try to separate some of the “here is what grief looks like now” from the “also, we’re about to enter into one of those (very layered) joyful life chapters and here’s the low down”. It’ll be two posts- worth and probably back to back because we are now T-minus TWO DAYS until it’s go time. And we all know that once that baby comes, there’s no telling when I’ll have the time or mental space to circle back and timestamp what life feels like TODAY, January 30, 2023… six years out and two days out, all at the same time. Six and two, a bizarre mix of reflection on the past and anticipation of the future. What a wild place to be. Today, I’ll work through the six. Tomorrow, the two.
So here it goes… what grief looks like in our world after six years.
We’ve learned that if grief is not something our culture talks about very often (we get it, they are uncomfortable waters to wade into), it certainly gets less talked about the longer the span of time someone experiences it. If we want to take it one step further, I think we could say that grief gets more challenging to wrap our minds around once we (intentionally or unintentionally) lean into the idea that “time heals all wounds” or, “we’re/they’re learning to live with it, so it seems less prevalent”. While there’s definitely truth to some of those sentiments (yes, time can be helpful in taming the ferocity and frequency of the initial grief waves and the “learning to live with it” is a healthy, natural adaptation to something that will be around for good), at the end of the day, it really doesn’t matter how much time has passed. Grief is grief and it’s weird. And painful. And present.
This is what I (re)learned this year. Year six. Six years of missing Kamri and mourning the loss of a life we thought we’d get to spend the rest of our days with. This was the year that I learned what it felt like to be reminded of the fact that it still really hurts. I should say, before we go down that road, I think the fact that, in some ways, the reason I had to be “reminded” is because, despite the ongoing hurt of loss, life has simultaneously been really beautiful, joyful, and full of hope these last six years.
We’ve grown so much in who we are and how we relate to the pain of losing Kamri. We talk about her and can talk about her pretty effortlessly, often without the presence of tough emotions or visual tears. We’ve learned how to answer (some of) our boys’ questions about her and where she is and when will she be coming back and when will we go and see her. We’ve worked so hard to hold her bedroom loosely enough that there are pieces that are there that will always be hers, while also allowing the room to flex and evolve so that each of our kids have been able to use and call it their own in some way. We’ve spent a lot (I mean, A LOT) of hours investing in our mental and emotional health in the counseling space and have put in so much effort to being the healthiest versions of ourselves as possible. We’ve gotten used to and sincerely welcome the messages we tend to get along the lines of “my co-worker is going through a miscarriage, what can I do to support her” or “our good friends just lost their baby, where do we even start in how to be there and care for them?”. It’s a unique place to be to be able to offer truth and insight into the pain that other’s may be experiencing and the types of support they may appreciate. We’ve been asked and said ‘yes’ to publicly sharing Kamri’s story, our walk with grieving her loss, and doing our best to represent the Lord, our faith, and our girl as best we can in those ways. We’ve learned the beautiful and heartbreaking role of being present for people in our own circles who are experiencing loss, their own versions of grief, or walking the painful road of having a child who is facing a medical condition that knocks you right off your feet as a parent and launches you into a dark, dark reality of “what will the end of this story look like?”. Six years brings a lot of roads travelled on this grief journey and a lot of growth because of it.
I think that’s why sometimes I forget. At the end of the day, even with all of the growth and “how far we’ve come”, grief is still grief. And it’s painful. And it’s present.
This is where grief is weird… sometimes it’s predictable and sometimes you just don’t see it coming until it’s a full-blown storm and you’re right in the middle of it. Predictably, year five was tough… for both of us. Five years old is a milestone birthday, one of the ones that sticks out as a benchmark year of your life. The milestones are hard. Another mile marker that stung a little extra happened about nine months after Kamri turned five… in September, Kamri would have started Kindergarten. The night before our school district had their first day of the 2022/2023 school year was a really sad one. It’s those moments when we remember what we lost and what we will never get to experience with our daughter. I started writing a post about what it felt like back then and never ended up finishing it, but here is some of what that moment of “milestone grief” felt like:
written on: Monday, August 29, 2022
Today was a first. For a lot of families, it was their child’s first day of school, some their very first day of Kindergarten. For us, it was one of the first significant milestones that hurt. You know, beyond the yearly birthdays… those days are tough, but they come once a year and we’ve learned how to navigate them, how to lean in when it feels sad and smile in genuine joy when it feels genuinely celebratory. But the life milestones? We haven’t hit too many of those yet… and I underestimated the feeling of the wave of grief that came rolling in last night when it hit me:
Our school district starts school tomorrow. Kamri is five, would be five if she were here. Tomorrow would be her first day of Kindergarten.
Some milestones are grayer in nature… kids start pre-school at different ages, lose teeth at unexpected times, learn how to ride a bike at some point in their childhood. I think maybe that’s why none of those felt like much of a loss comparatively. Sure, we would have loved to have walked her into pre-school for the first time, would have looked forward to playing tooth fairy, and would give a lot of things to watch our girl have enough breath in her lungs to pedal her first bike. Of course. But since all of those life moments don’t have a set date and time, there’s also not a set date and time to mourn them. Kindergarten, though? Dang. She’s five and school started today. This is it. This would have been it. I guess this is what losing Kamri feels like at year five. It still sucks. In some ways, more than ever.
And I guess that this… this is what grief looks like five years later.
I struggled a lot these last two months missing Kamri. I’ll write on behalf of myself, as although there are things Mitch and I share in how we experience grief, it’s not fair to him to speak on his behalf, as there are also things we experience quite differently. This past season was one of them. I think it was the perfect storm leading up to her birthday on December 28th that made this year, year six, particularly difficult. Without going too far into specifics, there were things I was personally involved with leading up to this season that left me feeling a bit more raw, having spent more time thinking about her by the time her actual birthday came around. For one, I had agreed to speak in a few different public settings on the topic of loss and how to navigate grief around the holiday season. Inevitably, in those moments, I will also share parts of Kamri’s story and, in turn, have to go to some pretty hard spaces and back to some dark moments in our story in order to do that. But it’s been six years and I am more equipped to be able to do so now, right? Yes. This is true, but as I learned this year, there is still personal cost and I underestimated the emotional toll it takes. By the time her birthday came around, I had already spent a month wading into some of the most painful places and memories and I was raw because of it. I found myself struggling in all of the quiet moments of December, feeling just so, so sad; tears so much more “at the ready” at any given moment. Her birthday wasn’t much different- while we did all of the fun, celebratory (and usual) traditions together, it was a hard day for me. In some ways, it felt like the kind of grief I felt in some of those initial days after she died, and made me wonder if really anything had changed from six years ago to now. I had underestimated the fact that even though it had been six years, I wasn’t immune to the ripple effects of being vulnerable and available with Kamri’s story and our journey of grief. They still, and will always, have personal impact and come at a personal cost. While that’s ok, it’s something I had to learn and something I’ll need to keep in mind, no matter “how long it’s been”.
Additionally, as you may or may not have heard… we’re expecting the final addition to our family, coming February 1st. A sweet baby girl. We are over the moon excited to welcome this little love, but as you can probably imagine, it has been a complex, unbelievably layered pregnancy experience. For all of us. I’ll save those musings (along with all the “we’re about to deliver our final baby in just a few days from writing this and we are ALL the emotions” thoughts) for another post. 🙂 What I will say here, though, is that this pregnancy, the timing of it, the fact that it’s a girl, the additional hormones… all of it, has added extra dimensions to this sixth year of our journey of grief.
And then, finally, I (maybe ‘we’) realized something about grief that wasn’t as apparent in the first few years and reminded us of what I’ve been saying since the beginning of this post: grief is painful and it is present, no matter how long it’s been. The thing about year six is that it’s taking on new facets that only come with the passing of time. And that is something I didn’t see coming.
I think what hit me hardest this year, this past season, was the fact that when you lose someone, there are no new developments. While the rest of the world continues to turn and progress, the story of loss doesn’t change. Sure, we evolve and the walk through that grief evolves with us if we allow it to, but the story stays the same. It doesn’t matter how much growth has happened, how many bridges we’ve crossed in the last six years- our story is still the same. This was perhaps the most painful realization for me over the last two months and something I am still feeling hurt by.
I am still the mom… I will always be the mom… that didn’t get to bring Kamri home. Mitch is still the dad that lost his daughter. No amount of time or growth or work we’ve done to heal will ever change that fact. That still is and will always be the story. And that really hurts. Even, and especially, six years later.
Along those same lines, there will never be anything more of Kamri available to us. The pictures and videos we have won’t increase year after year. There won’t be new memories to make with her, apart from whatever effort we put in to continue to include her in family moments. The stories of her life are the same and won’t be added to. What we have is what we’ll have forever and now that we’re six years out, we’re finding that this is new grief territory to us. This terrain feels foreign and will probably be what we need to learn to navigate next. What does it look like to be Kamri’s parents, walking this road of grief, now that the initial first five years have passed and we’re entering into what feels like the next chapter of time, but without anything new of her to engage with?
I don’t know the answer to that, but this is where we find ourselves six years later. Grief might not look like it did in year one, three, or even five. Some days do, certainly (for me, her birthday this year). But most don’t. Even January 20th, the day she died, felt like an “older, well-travelled path” this year. A day of the usual mild disorientation and pointless wandering about, not doing much of importance, until 7pm when we sit on the couch and just spend time being quiet with Kamri for the 25 minutes of her life. Waves of sadness, sure, but not as debilitating this particular year as maybe in days or years past.
Grief looks and feels different- in some triumphant, “look how far we’ve come” ways, but also in some defeating, “and there is so much left of this road to cover” ways too. And that’s ok, but it’s also good to know, helpful to keep in mind. We’ll always be learning new things about this and what we’ve learned about year six is that it’s that wild mix of the joy of continuing to live and the pain of continuing to hold. A mix of triumph at how far we’ve walked and weariness at thought of the “forever path” here on earth. And that, at year six, grief is still weird. And painful. And present.
And that’s ok.
It’s pretty obvious our story hasn’t been kept private. From day one, we’ve shared the intimate details of Kamri’s medical progress and hurdles, what it felt like the days and weeks and months after she died, and what living here without her has looked like for us in the everyday, but also in the bigger milestones and moments. Most of that sharing, though, has been through written word. Actually, nearly all of it.
Last winter, I spoke at a mom’s group Christmas party and part of my talk included some of the challenges that come up when the holiday season meets up with grief. The original plan for that group was to share earlier in the year a talk solely on grief and child loss. I had the outline all drawn up and it was on the calendar. Then my gallbladder revolted, I ended up in the hospital for six days, and we had to switch my date to December, which also happened to be the Christmas party. It felt a bit unnatural to try and merge a party setting with a message about child loss, so we switched gears and I focused more on the holiday season and how to navigate it when there are other emotions involved besides just joy.
SO, the bulk of our story remained in writing… until this past Monday.
We were asked by a dear friend to come on as a guest on her podcast, Wife Me Up. I know… the title is awesome. 🙂 And what she is bringing to the table in terms of Christ-centered, real-life discussion is so good. She’s on her third season now and is taking a deep dive into a topic that the Lord has called her to and that the world needs to be talking about. Her third season is called “Unstuck: Stories of Hope”, where she’s exploring a wide spectrum of stories where people were “stuck” in a season of life and how they got themselves “unstuck”. My favorite line of her introduction and explanation of the theme is “let’s unstick what’s not meant to stick”.
So when Megan asked if we would be up for coming on the show to talk about what it was like to be “stuck” in a season of grief and how we managed the slow forward motion to “unstuck”, we (a little nervously) said yes. Logistically (remember, we have two little buddies in the mix around here), it worked out that only I went up to record this time, but as always, it was a full-family effort. I wanted to be honest, though, about what has happened since then.
I am sitting here typing this on Wednesday, October 6th and the podcast was recorded on Monday, October 4th. It is set to come out tomorrow, Thursday, October 7th. Honestly? I am and have been a ball of so many emotions since we did it… NERVOUS being front and center. I was nervous going in. Not necessarily to speak, as I’ve done a good bit of public speaking over the years, but this would be the very first time I would put voice to our story for a larger audience to hear.
We’re used to talking about Kamri, her life, and our grief. We do it all of the time with friends, one-on-one or in smaller group settings, but to a bigger audience? Never. It’s one thing to write about it, I’m used to doing that. It’s become one of the ways I process best, kind of like I’m doing right now. With writing, though, I can backspace and re-word and take out completely and add later as I process more. Even after a post is published, I can go back and make changes and then click “Update”. It’s not the same with speaking it… once you say it, it’s out there. For better or worse, eloquent or not, even right or wrong, it’s out there.
I think I’ve been nervous because above all, I just wanted to represent Kamri, Mitch, our family’s journey, and most of all, God, well. That’s it. I wasn’t worried about mixing up words or stuttering or anything like that (that’s going to happen, just got to chuckle and roll with it). I just wanted to represent well what matters most to me in the world. Kamri’s is a story that is so close to my soul, that it would physically make me sick if things went south.
AS PARENTS OF A CHILD WHO IS NOT HERE, THERE ARE SO FEW OPPORTUNITIES TO FEEL LIKE WE ARE ACTUALLY STILL ABLE TO DO THE TANGIBLE THINGS PARENTS DO FOR THEIR CHILDREN.
When those chances come up, to not show up for her well would feel soul crushing.
I know this seems like maybe some unrealistic expectations to set up, but this is just what was weighing on my mind going into it. I also wanted to show up well for God. He has been so faithful to us, to not represent Him well would feel like just as much of a failure. I also knew that in the end, it’s really not about me and my capacity to share, it’s not about Mitch, it’s not even about Kam or her story. God is bigger and way more important than any of those things. It’s His story of love for His people that is center stage and my ability or inability to speak on behalf of that is inconsequential. All of these thoughts were swirling around and around in my head… and then it was go time.
Megan and I had a conversation that only two friends who have weathered some life together can have… we got in it. The deep, sorrowful, spaces where I shared out loud what it was like in some of the most intimate moments of Kamri’s life and death. The light-hearted, funny-looking-back-now moments that you just have to smile and laugh at. The ones where Mitch and I threw all of the messy emotions at God and told Him to freakin’ FIX THIS. The things we have learned about grief and would pass onto someone who may be walking a similar path of any type of loss. We went to all of those places and I felt God meet us there.
And yet. Yet, as I drove the two hour drive home, darkness seeped in. Doubt and insecurity slowly consumed me. I started to panic… I was thinking about all of the things I could remember that I said, all of the things I could remember that I should have said and didn’t. My mind started racing and picking apart all of what I did say and Satan took his opportunity to get his foot in the door and pry it wide open.
Did I say too much? Did I go into too much detail? Did I talk for too long about that? I forgot to share what her actual diagnosis ended up being. I forgot to say the piece Mitch shared with me about his own perspective. I never shared what grief today looks like. Did I paint the picture incorrectly that once you do the hard work up front, the grief goes away? When I talked about honest emotions toward God, did I even say that I still trust Him? Did I say enough how GOOD God was through the whole thing? Did I give more glory to Him or to the pain? I didn’t do this well. I did not show up for them like I should have. I let them all down… every single one of them.
I spiraled. This is something I don’t usually do… I’ve never been afraid to speak and never been that in my head about it. But this time, I spiraled. When I got home, we put the boys to bed, and it just got worse and worse. I was a mess and at one point, in complete hysterics. I felt such burden, such darkness, such guilt.
And then Mitch realized what was happening. Right then, he called Satan out and told him, in the name of Jesus Christ, to GET OUT. He started praying, that God would protect both of us from what was clearly a spiritual attack of the enemy. For those of you who are unsure of what we mean by this… we believe that, as the Bible says, “our fight is not against flesh and blood… but against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12). This essentially means that there is a spiritual war raging that we cannot see, but are 1000% in the middle of. Now, we KNOW that God has already won (Jesus neutralized sin and defeated death by dying on the cross and coming BACK TO LIFE three days later), but Satan is still going to try and tear every single person, every single soul away from the Lord that he can, and that’s what God’s heavenly army is fighting against. So when we talk about “spiritual warfare”, that’s what we’re talking about.
I believe that Satan is especially active in two scenarios: when we are weak or vulnerable and/or when we are a threat to him. We saw this ALL THE TIME in our month of fighting for Kamri’s life at CHOP. It was almost like clockwork. We’d be in an especially hard moment… or have a small win in her medical updates… or be just about to make a bold statement for the Lord and Satan was right there, trying to tear us down. In fact, as I was cleaning up some things on the blog, I came across this excerpt from the daily updates we were sending at the time:
1/14/20, 7:00pm
We are knee deep in the biggest spiritual battle we’ve ever faced. With a situation like this, not only is every day different, but every hour is too. God is clearly at work here. But Satan is too. It has been amazing to see the battle grounds and the ways that both are working. Mitch and I have noticed that ANYTIME we catch a moment of God’s peace, strength, and hope, Satan has something up his sleeve to bring us down and confuse us with lies… and it’s incredible how quick he is to pounce.
I don’t think it was an accident that this came across my plate. Actually, I know it wasn’t. I had been barely even skimming over those updates, but for some reason, happened to stop and read this one. Reading this hit me so hard because it snapped what’s been happening over the last few days into instant clarity. I mean, AS SOON as I got in the car to come home from Megan’s house, I could feel the dark thoughts of “what have you done? that was all wrong. you’ve let Him down.” seeping in. Later that night, I broke down sobbing to Mitch with all of the things I felt like I had said wrong or didn’t say enough of, and that’s when he realized the spiritual attack I was under. As soon as he prayed, my heart lightened and peace came over me and I was eventually able to fall asleep. The next day, we talked about it and Mitch shared that as soon as I fell asleep, he started to feel that same sense of darkness in his own mind and could hear lies that Satan was trying to tell him. Satan is vile. His intentions have always been and will always be to steal, kill, and destroy (ref. John 10:10).
It is no different now than it was five years ago, fighting daily for Kamri’s life, while also declaring the power and goodness of God. When we are weak or vulnerable or opening back up wounds, we are susceptible. When we speak out about the mighty name of the Lord, the Savior of the world, we are susceptible. The same is true for you and your own life. Think about it, look for it, and speak it. There is power in calling it what it is. Satan hates that; he’d rather operate in subtle, sneaky, backdoor ways until he’s firmly wedged into your mind and heart. Don’t let him do that. You call him right out and tell him to GET THE @#*% OUT. In the mighty and powerful name of Jesus Christ. (I don’t think God is generally a fan of swearing, but also pretty sure that all gloves come off when it comes to rebuking the devil…)
Whew. I know that’s a lot and this is a heavy (and can be scary) thing to put out into the world. It may be polarizing, but we have learned that there is just no time for beating around the bush. This is what’s going on. We are telling our story (this time on a podcast), I have been a ball of nerves about it, but God is victorious. It doesn’t matter what I said or didn’t say. His love for His people will win every single time. Praise the Lord, He really and truly does not need us to save the world. It’s already done. It’s just our job to show up to the best of our ability when He calls us to. So we said yes.
We said yes to sharing out loud, with our own voices, about Kamri’s story, our grief journey, and what it has looked like for us to become “Unstuck”. Now, if you would pray for us (and Megan) as the episode airs tomorrow, we would very much appreciate it. It’s a very vulnerable spot to be, putting a lot of who you are out for people to consume. Pray that our hearts would be protected, that we’d only be focused on the truth of Christ, and that, most of all, God would be glorified.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, for your ongoing support… our sweet KamFam. You have been here through all of the seasons so far and it only felt right to share with you where this journey has taken us in this particular one. As soon as the episode airs, we will share the link with you over on our Instagram (@mitchandleslie) and come back and update this post with the link here too.
There is nothing quite like decorating a kid’s room. For me, it’s the chance to try all the things that are in my wildest dreams, but that I’m too afraid (or unwilling) to commit to subjecting the whole house to.
I know there really are (or should be) no rules when it comes to decorating your own home… do what you like, what makes it feel like yours. But really, really… there are no rules when it comes to kids’ rooms. So much more can fly.
At least that’s the approach I’ve taken in designing the bedrooms of our littlest loves.
If you’ve been around here for awhile, you know we have an interesting family construct in that we have kids living here with us and waiting with Jesus in heaven. We talk about that often and openly, so it will come as no surprise to hear me say that this is our second of three children’s bedrooms we’ve created.
You can see the full post about Kamri’s sweet room here. I wrote about it last summer, right before we said goodbye to her room looking that way, in preparation for our youngest and second son, Calihan.
They share a room now, Kam and Cali. It’s so special and represents both of them and I can’t wait to share it with you someday. Someday soon, at that, because I’m determined to do so before he turns ONE (um, excuse me, what??) and that’s in two weeks (um, excuse me, WHAT??).
Today, though, we’re talking all about Holden’s room… our middle child, our first baby boy. I could go on and on about Holden, but we’re going to get right to the design fun because there’s a twist at the end of this story. SO, Holden’s room…
For the longest time, the back bedroom of our three bedroom home was a storage space. And by that, I mean a spot for junk to accumulate. We did a clean-out here and there over the years, but it always seemed to make its way back to near-hoarder status.
When Kamri was born, we opted to keep our “guest room” (as we very graciously were calling that storage space) as is, and turn our third and final bedroom into her nursery. After she passed away, we held onto the hope of welcoming another baby girl into her space; a game plan that worked really well with our unwillingness to change a single thing about her room.
And then Holden was a boy. It stunned us. No way were we changing Kamri’s room (it had only been maybe six months or so since she had died- we weren’t ready for that yet), so the “guest room” became Holden’s room.
It took me awhile to be ready to design and decorate another space for a new baby. I had just done this. Like, JUST FREAKIN’ DONE IT. All that time, all that work, all that waiting, all that excitement… and there was no baby. How are we supposed to do it all over again now? The room sat for a good long while before we slowly began to bring in pieces, to make some headway.
Before long, we gave the walls and ceiling a fresh coat of paint, I made over a solid wood dresser that came from Mitch’s grandmother’s house, and we bought our second rocker and crib of the year.
We weren’t ready to create a new room that had a definitive “boy-theme”… partly because we’ve never really been into the “trucks and dinosaurs” for boys and “unicorns and butterflies” for girls; we prefer things a little less “themed”.
The other (and bigger) part of it had to do with the fact that we were coming to terms with having to do a complete 180 degree shift from being “girl parents” to all of a sudden being “boy parents”. It was hard. It was an extremely challenging season of learning how to engage with our daughter, who was not here, in ways we had never imagined or wanted to, but also prepare ourselves to be present for and ready to engage with our son, who would be here soon.
Slowly, ever so slowly though, the room came together. Then, February came and Holden came with it.
Over time, we softly (the Lord knew we were fragile and needed some things to just gently fall into place) and naturally landed on a room that became his, that became filled with life. Holden’s room is home to splashes of vibrant color, nods to adventure and exploring, all grounded with soothing blank spaces to allow everything to breathe.
For us, this looks like neutral walls, some deep grays in the rocker and baskets, and fun color in the accessories: rug, curtains, art, decorations, and even the books. A bit of rainbow for our rainbow baby. We eventually got him a navy blue changing pad cover, but he used his sister’s for the first bit of his life. 🙂
This room has served us so well for Holden’s three and a half years of life. It’s grown with him, too. Last summer, we converted his crib to a “big boy bed” (aka. we took a side off so it could function as a bed instead of a crib).
Not only has our boy spent his whole life growing in and with this room, but we’ve grown with it too. It held space for us so we could take our time processing how we would ever change Kamri’s room, it gave us a fresh slate to practice how we would grow to interact and engage with a new baby, it absorbed so many of the hard emotions that came with having to “do it all over again”, having “to start from scratch”. We needed this room. We love this room.
Each season we’ve had here brings new things, new changes and lo and behold, here we are again. Another version of this sweet room. I wanted to share the pictures up until this point because, as it happens, Holden’s room doesn’t look like this anymore. He’s growing up and so it’s onto the next adventure for his space… and I can’t wait to share it with you. 🙂