The Gift of Life

In more than one way lately, I've been exposed to the realities of this crazy thing called life. Work has been full of sick, sick people waiting for organs. What's new? And people who have received their "gift of life," now losing it, shamefully, on their own accord, usually from the same cause that put them into organ failure in the first place. There are always the sad sacks who can't afford their meds or don't have family support to get to their appointments because they live too far away or the ones who can't read so they ingest toxic levels of their medications. Funny thing is that all those things are reviewed upon getting listed, aren't they? so that another organ in this short supply doesn't go to waste?! Whatever.
On a much lighter note, my girls are great. The true "gift of life." My oldest starts Kindergarten in a few weeks. She doesn't get it yet, she thinks it is just letters and numbers. "I don't want to learn letters, Mom!" with the raise in her voice at the end. I told her, "You already know them, silly...." And she replies, "Oh. So what do we do there again?" I told her about some of my friends I've known since Kindergarten. You know who you are. I told her I don't remember a thing about being 4, but all my memories begin when I turned 5 and went to school. "I have some of the world's greatest friends", I told her, "and many of them I've known since I was 5." Reality check: "but you were 5 a long time ago..." I'm excited for her. She's going to love school.
The baby is over a bout of rotovirus, or so we suspect. Everything that went in her came out, quickly, and in mostly the same consistency. Poor thing. So she got shots again, and if you've been reading, you know how I feel about those. It's a dirty, nasty, necessary trick. (Work in a transplant unit and you'll see people that get those weird diseases. And if I brought something home on my icky blue scrubs, I'd be darn glad she got stuck in the legs.) She's otherwise right on track. Sitting up quite well, eating a bunch of food, rolling over. She gets on her knees and sticks her butt up in the air when she's on her belly, like she's going to take off one of these days. She gets better all the time, just like her sister. They are quite a pair, those two. Love 'em.