Sunday, April 29, 2012Tonight's picture was taken in May of 2009 in Mattie's hospital room. Mattie's friends Louise and Meredith gave him this wonderful sea turtle mood ring. Mattie was partial to turtles, especially after his preschool adopted him one named Roxana. Mattie would track Roxana's migration patterns on the Internet. This turtle ring was the first mood ring Mattie had ever seen, and he liked it very much. As he was holding my hand, I snapped a picture of us together. This turtle ring remains with me today in my jewelry box.
Quote of the day: Action is the foundational key to all success. ~ Pablo Picasso
Picasso's quote speaks to the day Peter and I had today. It was a day of ACTION! I woke up early and felt compelled to plant our garden. I credit Peter for the fact that we have a garden and a repainted deck this spring. He was the motivating factor here. If he left it up to me, everything would have remained as it was. A mess! But Peter has been working on me for weeks now. First cleaning the deck, then buying paint, then encouraging us to paint the deck, and finally slowly buying flowers. In fact after we painted the deck two weekends ago, he began buying flowers and left them for me stacked on the deck. It was a subtle hint that it was planting season. I am happy he was persistent and dealt with all of these major tasks in stages. Cleaning and painting the deck was monumental, especially when you consider Speedy Red needed to be disassembled. But the planting today took me about 4 hours, and Peter was helping throughout the process. I could describe what I did, but I figured showing you would be much better.
In my parsley flower pot, Peter stuck this wonderful solar powered butterfly. Our friend, Tad, gave us this butterfly at Christmas time. What you may not be able to see is that the sunlight causes this beautiful yellow butterfly to flutter around in a circle. You can even hear the sound of the fluttering. It is an absolutely fantastic addition to our garden and as soon as Peter assembled it I sent a picture of it in motion to my friend Junko (Tad's wife). 
The next six pictures are of our deck. I really should have taken a before and after shot. But imagine the paint peeling terribly, a large ride-on car sitting where our table now stands, and NO flowers. That is what our deck looked like. 
We have been working hard at incorporating the sun and the moon into our garden. So you may see these elements on the walls and in wind chimes. Also notice in the center of the plants is one of the fountains Mattie made me for my birthday in July of 2008. 
I am so thrilled to see our deck clean and painted. The improvement is tremendous, and as you can see, we have a big Mattie sunshine hanging on the wall. We bought this beautiful metal piece in Bethany Beach last year. As soon as we saw it, we both knew we had to get it.
In addition, our garden also features butterflies. On our deck door is a painted metal butterfly we purchased in Bethany Beach last year. It is one of the many symbols we associate with Mattie. In fact, Peter planted a box full of butterfly friendly plant seeds today. So I can't wait to see what actually grows from this and whether it will attract our fluttering friends. 
Another view!
This is the view of our deck from Mattie's Room. Mattie loved looking outside, especially since his bed was right by the window. He had a bird's eye view, and at night time, he would always check for Mattie Moon before going to bed.
If all of this wasn't enough activity, I also decided to go through our filing cabinets today. I am the queen of saving paper, and a lot of things needed to be cleaned out so I could make room for Foundation papers. Papers which I had piled all over the place. Organized chaos, as I call it, because I know exactly where everything is in my pile system. We literally threw four large garbage bags full of paper out. I thought going through files would be easy, but I had many folders dedicated to Mattie. I came across the following: Mattie's "healthy" health records, sonogram pictures of Mattie, information about his school acceptances, and even files about my baby shower, and how we picked Mattie's name. Going through these files wasn't easy, and most of the items I saved and reorganized them back into folders. In one of the folders, was a detailed account of Mattie's hospitalization in October of 2006. Mattie had an undiagnosed ear infection that led to sepsis, and hospitalization. He celebrated Halloween in a hospital bed that year! While in the hospital, the only thing the floor had to entertain Mattie was blank paper and a pencil. There was NO Child Life Specialist at this hospital. This is a hospital really geared toward adults. In any case, in the file folder were all the pictures Mattie drew that day while in the hospital. I remember it well and naturally couldn't part with a single drawing!
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