Right Where I Am: three years, nine months, one week.

Juliet is crawling around on the floor blowing raspberries. She's just learned to pull up to standing and she's ever so proud of herself, the clever little pumpkin. Angus is sitting right beside me, as he often is, asking to watch a Fireman Sam dvd (and I've just taken two minute blogging break to put it on for him). He's got his dummy (pacifier) and he's twirling my hair, because my hair is his most favourite thing in the whole wide world. Heaven forbid I ever ask for a number two all over like his dad does when he goes to the hairdresser. We've just been for a long walk to the shops where Juliet smiled ecstatically at everyone who so much as looked sideways at her and she enjoyed her first ever sushi roll. Angus, meanwhile, tantrummed from one end of the shopping centre to the other, such is the life of a two and a half year old. We got our groceries, both kids fell asleep in the pram, and we walked home. Simon is now back at the said shops, picking up the few things we forgot to grab, as is always the way, and while there is calm in the house, I'm here to take part in a very special project. So in terms of where I am in my life right now, that is exactly it.

But Angie's project is more than that. The project aims to find out where we are with our grief, so I guess I will do my best to articulate that. At almost four years, it is hard to put in to words these days, as it is not the searing pain that it once was and it doesn't rule my life with an iron fist anymore. Though of course I miss her. God damn it I do.

Josh wrote a post recently that made a light bulb go off in my head and I realised, this year, more than any other since we lost Hope, I am living in the present. I am not looking back, I am not looking forward, I am living day to day, and mostly enjoying every sleep-deprived minute.

We feel very comfortable and content in our little life, a life with a busy little boy running around from sun up to sun down and a happy little girl who loves nothing more than smiling and watching the said little boy do all the running around. Life is sweet, life is funny, life is exhausting, but we know better than to complain about silly little things like not getting enough sleep, because things can always be a whole lot worse. Things HAVE been a whole lot worse.

Last year when I took part in this writing project, I was 27 weeks pregnant with Juliet, having only just received the all clear from our amnio after the CMV scare. However, I was still scared as hell that she wouldn't make it. Because when I carry a baby now, that's just how it is. It seems more likely to me that they will die, rather than they will live. I mused in that post how I would cope raising two babies under two, and while I will admit at times it has been incredibly hard, we seem to have found some sort of groove now. So back then, I was finding it difficult to focus on the present moment, as I was worried about what was ahead, and wondering if we were all going to make it. And for the few years prior to last year, I think I was more often than not looking back, yearning to get back to her and aching to go back and change things. I know better now. I can't change, fix or resolve any of it - she's gone and not coming back and that is a harsh pill of reality to swallow.

But what on earth do I say about my grief, specifically, right now? It is there, sure. As permanent as the mole on the back of my neck and the scar on my left shin. It will always be there and lately, it has been making me feel very.... other. My last post was titled "The Others" about the people out there who just don't get it, but more and more I am realising that having a dead baby makes me The Other.

Just yesterday I was with a friend at a big play centre type place, the sort of place I loath going to and to be honest, rarely go to at all. But she invited me and I knew Angus would like it, so I went along.

Angus seems to have a time limit with these sort of places though, and after about an hour, he is done and wants to go home. All of the other kids seemed happy to run around until they literally collapsed in pile of sweaty exhaustion, but Angus seems to expire a bit quicker. And I wonder, is that my doing? Is that because I spent a lot of time cocooned inside with him, not really wanting to mix with normal mummies? I sat there, and watched these mums pull out their perfectly cut triangle sandwiches in perfectly themed and matching Tupperware containers and I felt like an outsider as I consoled my tired and cranky toddler on my knee. Even with two living kids to my name and looking like every bit the normal mum, I feel like a fraud. Can these other mums see my dead baby storyline when they look at me? Do they know I am not like them by the way I hover a little closer over my children? I don't really know, but I do know grief and loss definitely changed the way I parent, or would have parented and perhaps changed the people my living children are now growing up to be. I don't know whether I am worried about this or not, but right now I know I still need to keep my babies close. I am home with them permanently and for now, I need to keep it this way. I heal faster by having them closer, I think. I am so traumatised by the months I spent as a childless mother that I want to revel in and enjoy the moments while my babies are little and more and more I am realising, that this is probably it. There won't be any more living siblings for my lost baby Hope.

While I certainly am living in the present more than ever before in my parenting history and treasuring this incredibly special time with the two little people I get to raise each day, I can't help but begin to look in to the future at this time of year, and I'm specifically staring down one particular date in August - her birthday of course. And now that time of year is all the more busier with Juliet's birthday coming the day before which is also the anniversary of the day Hope died inside of me. Last year I was just so wound up in wanting to get her out, that perhaps this year I will truly realise the ramifications of booking the c-section on that day. Or maybe I won't? Who knows? All I know is that the bitter and the sweet are never going to be more pronounced than on those two days of the year.

So while I think about planning a little first birthday party for my newest and not so little baby girl, I am also thinking about what I will do on the birthday of my four year old who never got to be. This year, I can't run away and hide. This year, I can't use birth (or post birth recovery) as an excuse either. We have booked a little holiday again, but we don't leave until August 20, the day after the double birthday bonanza. So on Hope's birthday we will be here, at home, and we'll have to face it, head on. But there are no plans. I guess we'll be busy tiding up from the party the day before and getting ready for the holiday to come on the day after, and I am ok with all of that. I'll either want to spend it with family and friends or I won't, and I don't need to know that right now. I'll see how I feel at the time. Because that's the thing with a grief like this, you just never really know how it is going to hit you.

While missing Hope is part of my every day life, I really only miss her as a baby. The idea of her being an almost four year old and bigger than my big boy Angus is just too much for me to wrap my brain around. I know a lot of four year olds, but I have no idea what or who my almost four year old would be. A lot of the two year olds we know are toilet training at the moment, and while Angus has made a start at this seemingly mammoth task, he is digging his heels in a bit. A friend reminded me the other day that these other kids we know all have older siblings, and I thought well yeah, he should have one of those too. Helping him out and showing him the way. But instead, he wears the cap of the eldest child in this house, and in our unconventional little family, it is he who is paving the way for our Juliet and helping her learn about life along the way.

I've just taken a five hour break in writing this post. I ended up back at the shops myself, to get the second lot of groceries we forgot in visits one and two. Juliet nursed twice. Angus used the potty (hurrah!) We cooked a spinach and lentil dahl for dinner (recipe provided by my dear babyloss friend in real life). Simon wrestled with the kids on the floor as part of the wind down (or wind up?) before the bath time bed time shenanigans. Just now, we put the kids to bed with another serve of boob for Juliet and four books for Angus. And that seems to be the moral of the story here - life seems to always get in the way. Of blogging, of missing, of grieving, even though grieving and missing are forever tied to everything I do and with me every step I take. Right now, I would of course kill for a full nights sleep, but I'd also give my left, and possibly right arm as well to have a full day, hell even a weekend, to grieve. To be with my thoughts, to give myself over to my baby girl and remember her and yearn for her in a way I once could. The way I was able to before my two living treasures arrived and blew my life right open, in the greatest possible way. Right now though, apart from the obvious, I can honestly say I wouldn't change a thing.

And that's where I am.