I’ve blogged about this before, but my life changed after I learned about Maddie Spohr and read tons and tons of posts on Heather’s blog. Maddie’s story IS life changing. It SHOULD change your life. And really, anytime I hear about people who have lost their children it breaks my heart. It’s my empathy kicking in again. I know that hearing things like this makes anyone sad. But for me it’s something I think about every day. Everyday I hold my babies and I wonder what life would be like without them. I wonder how I’d go on after burying my babies. Or watching them suffer with illnesses. I know I shouldn’t think about these things but I can’t help it. I have a very vivid imagination and my mind wanders and I constantly think of what if’s. Those what if’s are what make me appreciate things so much more. Maddie left us 2 months after I had Livie. Here I was elbow deep in puke and poop and sleepless nights and wondering if I’d ever make it out alive. Then I heard about Maddie. I engulfed myself in Heather’s blog. Talk about feeling like such a total unappreciative asshole. I knew that Heather would give anything to be elbow deep in poop and deliriously tired. And since then I’ve tried to live differently. I’ve tried to appreciate the sleepless nights because that means that I have my baby with me still. I try to appreciate all the times I argue with Hannah or sit and do homework for what seems like hours because at least I have my baby here to do those things with. Sometimes it takes tragedies to make you realize what you have. It’s sad, but true. Heather posts pictures and video of Maddie often. In fact she did today from when they took Maddie to the pumpkin patch last year. I’m already a camera whore. Y’all know this. Livie’s been alive 8 months and I have over 600 photos of her. I have almost 3000 of Hannah. If only I had a digital camera before Hannah was 2 1/2. I just can’t even imagine how many MORE pictures of her I’d have. After reading a post one day from Heather where she talked about dreading the day she ran out of pictures of Maddie to post…wow. Just wow. Something you just don’t even think about until you read it. After that I kicked it up even more. I try to take pictures of the girls a few days a week. I post them to facebook. I put them ALL in flickr. I email them out to family. I post them here. I put them everywhere I am. God forbid something should ever happen to either one of them…I never want to run out of pictures to post.