Wave

You guys.

My miracle niece has had another accident.

She’ll be fine, despite being the tiniest little pacemaker recipient with the tiniest little nose job, but good god did this one take a toll on my family. On the other hand, it really did cement our pre-existing belief that we’re the luckiest family ever in the history of the world.

And not just because Miracle Niece will be fine, but because we have this incredible support system where we all have each other’s backs ONE MILLION percent and are able to mobilize and take care of things.

I was telling my parents that I feel like the nose incident made our family react like a wave: We reared up, paused as we gathered steam and figured out the path forward, and then carried each other smoothly toward the shore. They think I’m too metaphoric and in my head about it, but I think it’s exactly representative of what happened…and now we’re all wrapped up in appreciating each other and thinking about how lucky we are, when I’m sure plenty of people would be thinking the opposite if they were in our shoes.

I’ve been working my way through a couple months’ worth of other peoples’ agony (2012 is proving to be rough for A LOT of people) and feeling strong and capable of supporting the people I love, but this last thing with the baby made me think that perhaps I might be near the end of my rope. Let’s not test that out, okay Universe?

But that tiny little girl? She’s the least traumatized of any of us. And when I helped my SIL Who Does Not Wear John Deere Pajamas put medicine on Miracle Niece’s nose the other day, I expected it to be a struggle but instead, the world’s tiniest TROOPER just leaned forward and patiently let me glob crap on her face.

She’s not quite photo-ready these days, but here’s a shot from our family portrait photo shoot a couple of months ago just so you can be reminded of how beautiful she is: