2016 started off with adding our third to our family. Easter morning was here and I biked the twins to our friends house and then biked to the hospital. And before morning was over Lydia was here and we had our Swedish fika. Besides the epidermal running "late" and the rough n' tough Eastern Midwife ("just take the gas"), Lydia came quite nicely. We brought her home and we had our good-sized 5 person family in our tiny little apartment. But then things quickly turned. You were back in the hospital, you had a temperature of 40, the mysterious infection was circulating in your blood and the doctor through out the word sepsis. Your mom was on a plane and in 72 hours was in Sweden. What a scary time. You realize how fragile life is. You ponder those dreaded thoughts. The thought that I could loose you. Besides the thought that I could be left to raise 3 kids alone ("don't you dare leave me"), there is also the sad thought that we would have
It hit me today how fast time goes. I was thinking about our time in Sweden and realized that was 5 years ago. It seemed like it just happened. Like we just moved there and we just walked in to realize that there weren't even lightbulbs in this apartment, and the only things we had were the clothes on our back. But Time is also graciously slow and 11 years is a good long time to enjoy together. Our lives are marked by epochs and episodes and seasons: Early Marriage, Kids, Sweden, and presently our time back in the US. Each of those times seemed like a long and important stages of our life. Early years of TAV and the twins prepared us to do hard things. Sweden was a continuation of that mantra with great reward. We had the opportunity that few get. And I think Sweden was perhaps the greatest change in us. We got to experience something new and see a way of life that most do not get the chance to see, and then bring that back with us to the states. But what a remarkable