And in other news...

People who study grief for a living say that there's a peak in the overwhelming, can't-make-coffee-without-crying portion of the program between three and six months after your loss. I gotta figure that's where i am now. Because seriously; brushing my teeth makes me burst into tears.

I guess it's just something to gut through. It's interesting that this peak comes just about the time when the rest of the world starts to figure you should be getting back into the swing of things.

I'm just glad my office door closes, and doesn't have a window.

So instead of recapping the ongoing "Kleenex Count" here in the land of Bean, I thought we'd come up to date on things that are far happier: The ongoing progress with bringing Daisy Mae into our family.

I've neglected this in my writing, although it's been a major focus of our activity. I guess my point here in the last three months has been to try to find a place to pour out my pain. I'm still going to do that, although it's probably time to intermingle some more discussion of living, rather than dying.

We're starting to become a family again.

It hasn't been easy. We've had a lot of family therapy over the last three months, with a lot of homework and very difficult heart-to-heart talks along the way. I'll confess that, when the Bug died, I realized that I had been thinking of Daisy Mae more as "the Bug's sister" than "my daughter". It was a difficult and painful confession to make. But in making it, I freed myself to figure out how to build my relationship with Daisy from scratch, with our own rules and our own ways of doing things.

I have to say it's working out well. She's still a teen, and by that I mean she makes me stop and stare, dumbfounded, at her at least once a day. But she's increasingly becoming MY teen.

I had a wonderful time fussing over her for Valentine's Day, picking her up from a weekend away at a teen Purity Conference with flowers and balloons and candy. She acted like it wasn't a big deal at the time, but later, I overheard her tell three of her friends and her counselor about it.

This weekend, we got her ears pierced. This was a big deal, and she was scared. But she's happy with the results, and so am I. We also went shopping for her dresses for her spring semi-formal dance, which might have been a disaster, but ended up being a delightful time. We got dresses that she loved and that even Dad approved of.

She seems...happy. And that's a big deal. She hasn't had a lot of happy in her life. We're honestly, collectively looking forward to finalizing the adoption. We're looking forward to a trip to Ireland together with Aunt Kate. We're laughing more and fighting a LOT less. We're cooking together more. We're making plans.

It's not perfect. We still disagree over bedtimes, food choices, R-Rated movies, chores, boyfriends, the Internet, cell phones, and towels on the floor. We all take turns feeling and expressing hurt. We each take our turns crying, and each for our own reasons. But we're becoming a family and that's a good thing.