{Originally posted on The Busy Dad Blog}

I’ve written and re-written this first paragraph 4 or 5 times tonight, hating everything that I put on this screen. How can you capture the feeling that washes over you when a beautiful sweet little girl who just a few weeks ago made you smile for no reason other than her flashing you a “who the hell are you?” look is suddenly taken away from this world? I’m pissed. Pissed that it happened to such a pure soul. Pissed that a mother and a father now have to live through the heartbreak of it all. And saddened to the core.

I didn’t know Maddie, Heather or Mike that well, and I only met them once at a gathering recently at their home (of course Maddie won me over right away – who could resist a smile like hers!). But I’m a parent. And that is all the commonality I needed to share with them to feel a stab in the heart when I found out about this last night. If you are a parent, I don’t need to go on. You understand.

If there is any ray of positivity at all that I can squeeze from this, it’s that Maddie’s smile is in the hearts of hundreds if not thousands right now. Her smile has manifested itself in an outpouring of generosity from people like you and me, donating to the March of Dimes in her name; mobilizing to walk as one in her memory; and using our collective voices online to keep that smile alive across the internet.

{Originally posted on Slouching Past 40}

How does it happen that a sixteen-month-old girl with eyes that managed to reflect all of the abundant colors of the ocean at once and with a smile containing such joy that strangers couldn’t help but smile with her, a girl with all of it before her (only 500 days under her belt, give or take), might be here one moment and gone the next?

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I do not know. I am one of the lucky ones. My son comes home with a sore throat and later spikes a fever. His temperature soars, and I fret. I take him to the doctor, who diagnoses strep throat and hands me a prescription for penicillin. Eighteen hours and three pills later, my child looks and feels remarkably better. He is no longer pale with a slightly greenish cast. He is not hot to the touch. Fatigue does not ring his eyes. I can’t believe how well this medicine works!, he grins. I could almost have gone to school today! And then he glances at me. Worry has crossed his face. He amends: Well, not almost… I’ll be ready tomorrow, though.

All of us wanted Maddie’s story to go like this, and most of us expected that it would.

But a few of you know better. Experience has taught you different and cruel lessons. You were cast out of Eden some time ago. The rest of us bite our lips and hold our children closer, huddling up against one another, afraid that we, too, might be called on, might have to forsake the complacence we clutch as tightly as we do those children of ours, might have to bump up against the fact that our children are mortal, no different from us, from our parents, from their parents and all the parents before them, too. What hubris we show when we congratulate ourselves on how well we’ve managed to protect our offspring when the reality is that we have so little to do with it.

{Originally published on A Smeddling Kiss}

Today I learned of the death of a beautiful little girl.

One of my fellow Blog Nosh editors is Heather Spohr, who has chronicled her difficult pregnancy and life with her husband and darling premature daughter on her blog The Spohrs Are Multiplying. Madeline Alice Spohr passed away yesterday, sometime after Heather tweeted from the hospital, “They are going to intubate her. I’m freaking out.”

I rarely pray, because I’m not sure who I’m praying to, but sometimes when things get scary I fall back onto my Catholic upbringing and find myself repeating the Lord’s Prayer over and over, just sending it out there in case it might help. I did it the morning of 9/11/01, I did it when my dad was in surgery, and I found myself doing it last night after reading that tweet.

The terrible news about Maddie stopped me in my tracks this morning. I forget after 9 years that Pepper was a preemie, too – 6 weeks early – and so I made my way over to Maddie’s March of Dimes page to make a donation. I urge anyone who reads this to do the same.

I realized I hadn’t posted anything in a week, and while looking for something to post, I found a draft I started last month titled “Heartsore” about all the ways I am worried for my daughter. She and I have been having a difficult time lately. She is grumpy and whiny and ungrateful and I am often at a loss how to deal with all of these negative emotions.

As you night expect, re-reading it after learning of Maddie’s death flipped my perspective. I have a beautiful 9 year old girl, smart as a whip and full of neurosis and overflowing with emotions, and I am so grateful. So lucky. And that is what I will tell her tonight when she starts yelling at the computer or whining about bedtime or making faces at the dinner I have prepared for her. I’m going to tell her, “I’m so lucky to have you.” She’ll probably think I’m teasing her at first, but I won’t be, and by the time she falls asleep tonight, I’m going to make sure she understands how much I mean it.

Tomorrow morning, I’ll wake her up for school and she will groan at me and whine about brushing her hair. It will all start all over again, the crying and the lecturing and the love and the anger, and it is difficult to put into word how grateful I am for that.

{Originally posted on Joy Unexpected}

I can’t sleep.

My friend’s baby died today.

Her baby died.

I had read that she has been taken to hospital by ambulance. I was worried, so this afternoon I sent her an email.

Just catching up on what’s going on with your baby girl. I’ve been so busy and wrapped up in my stupid little world.If you need ANYTHING, please don’t hesitate to call me. I’m only an hour-ish away.

Thinking of you all.

She wrote back and said she was worried. Maddie was breathing really hard and the doctors didn’t know why. She was scared, but glad she was being monitored so closely.

I remember feeling worried, but thinking they would figure out what was wrong and she would get better. She had to get better.

Then, tonight, I clicked over to her blog and read this.

My husband was sitting here on the couch with me when I read it. I threw my laptop down and just shouted “NO! NO!!”

I started to shake. I was in shock.

I then called a couple of friends who are also friends with Heather and we sobbed together in disbelieve.

It’s unreal. I still can’t believe it.

Every time I close my eyes to try to sleep, I think of Heather. I think of the last time I saw her– we were at the LA food bank, volunteering our time. She was so kind and wonderful to be around. Towards the end of the day, she got a phone call from her babysitter. Maddie had a fever. I saw the worry instantly sweep over her face. I told her it was okay if she needed to leave. I could just feel the love she had for her baby girl in that moment.

{Originally posted by writer Maggie over at okay. fine. dammit.}

I can’t explain to my family why I’m so sad today; there’s no way they would understand. The only people who will get it are you, you out there, and so I’ve come to this space to add my liquid prayer to your ocean of empathy, to set it a-sail, to hope it reaches its rightful owner.

I mean, what can I say to my husband? That a “friend’s” 17-month-old daughter died unexpectedly? Because we’re not really friends, right? I’ve never met the Spohr’s.

But I know their names as solidly as I know anyone’s in my “real life.” More than that, so much more than that, I know that sweet baby girl’s face. How many times have I scrolled over it in my Reader, my own daughters screaming, “Stop!” My four-year-old smacking her warm palm down on my mouse-hand, saying, “Wait! Go back! Show me dat cute giwl again. I know her! Who is that, mommy? I know her!”

Because they saw that face a time or two on this computer, and it was the kind of face you can’t forget. It was the kind of face that triggered on instant grin on my own. How many times did I lean across the couch to my husband, giggle, and show him that face? Watch his own smile break like a wave?

Still. I am here, on spring break, shuffling through the sand a bit slower, hanging back, healthy and blessed and happy and yet, not. Hugging my girls a bit tighter, answering their questions a beat or two late, distracted. Grief-stricken.

How do we explain to the rest of the world how well we have come to know each other, all of us here? So that if one of us suffers an unfathomable loss we feel it like our own gut-punch? Who is that, mommy? I know her!

I know her too, baby.

I’m shocked. I’m sad. And I’m so, so sorry.

May she light up heaven the way she lit up earth.

{Originally posted on Mommy Pie}

It’s 2 p.m., I’m sitting in a coffee shop surrounded by people. And the tears, they are streaming.

It’s funny, this community of ours. Call us Mommy Bloggers. Call us the Blogosphere. A powerful, and at times awe-inspiring collective voice. More often than not, a beautiful collective heart.

Our friendships forged over late night Tweets and Comments Sections, we find ourselves bonding with women we may never meet face-to-face. Yet, the invisible ties of the Internet that bind us are, inexplicably, many times, just as strong as the ties we feel with those we affectionately call our IRL (In Real Life) Friends.

Beginning today, I make no distinction between the two.

I’m no less happy for a Blog Friend when she lands a great job.

I’m no less sad when she loses it.

I don’t laugh less when she recounts her kid’s latest antics. (Or more times than not, her own.)

I don’t worry less about her during the tough times.

My heart doesn’t break less when she suffers staggering, unimaginable loss.

It’s 2 p.m., I’m sitting in a coffee shop surrounded by people. And the tears, they are streaming.

{Originally published on The Newborn Identity}

A couple days ago I said that, thanks to Rigby, I had cared for Madeline flawlessly for the most part. I’m not going to say this statement was untrue, but I will do my best impression of a contract lawyer and direct you to the statement, “for the most part.” Before you get too worried please realize that no babies were harmed in this production. Nonetheless, I may have made one pretty bad mistake while caring for Maddie that, when I realized what I had done, made me tear up. Wait. The contract lawyer in me has advised me to revise that statement. I didn’t tear up…dudes never tear up unless “Field Of Dreams” comes on TBS…I just inexplicably found that wetness had appeared on my eyeballs.

So, as you may know, Maddie is off the bottom of the weight chart for her age not only because she was a preemie, but also because she has been adversely affected by the media’s tendency to glamorize women of nearly anorexic weights. Okay. Maybe it was mainly because she was a preemie, but I’m pretty sure that re-run of “The Simple Life” I once watched while feeding her didn’t help.

Anyhoo, the first week I was left home alone with Maddie my wife left me with a million instructions on how to take care of her. There were ten steps to be followed when changing a diaper, elaborate demonstrations of how to swaddle her, heck, there may have even been a long discussion of how to even breathe around the kid. That last one may have been an exaggeration, but it gives you the idea.

At the end of my first week as Maddie’s day-time caretaker Heather came home and was very impressed with my work. Had I correctly instituted the ten step instructions on how to change her diaper? Check. Was I able to swaddle her pefectly in ten seconds or less? Check. Did I put two scoops of formula into the 110 cc’s of water every time I fed her? Check, er, what? TWO SCOOPS? I thought it was just one!

Heather’s jaw dropped. “You’ve only been giving her one scoop?”

I cleared my throat and said, “Um, er, perhaps?”

Heather Spohr was one of our very first editors, joining our Overcoming Adversity channel before our launch thanks to a “bloggy” friendship we struck up while her daughter Maddie was in the hospital. Heather’s husband, Mike, was one of our very first bloggers, sharing with us a post he wrote about what it’s like being a stay-at-home dad caring for a preemie baby daughter. It was, to say the least, hilarious.

A strong sense of humor defines the Spohr family. It bonds them. It defined their daughter, Maddie.

Madeline Alice Spohr, daughter to Heather and Mike Spohr, passed away on April 7, 2009. As bloggers, all we can do is rock collectively in disbelief and then scramble to do what we can to send support across the ether that is our relationships.

So Blog Nosh Magazine is filling our table with the bounty that was Maddie. What follows below is what I consider to be the definitive Maddie post, written by her mother about a man that Maddie and I both felt belonged to us. Yes, that’s right: Matt Lauer.

I officially bow down to you, Maddie. Your smile was always brighter and your eyes always more mesmerizing than mine anyway. Enjoy watching him shower naked from now on. You win.

PS- Below every post about Maddie that will appear, you will find links to a PayPal account set up for the Spohrs. In addition, in lieu of flowers, the Spohr family ask that you donate to the March of Dimes. We’re doing what we can to send a little support their way, with a cherry on top from Blog Nosh Magazine.

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Mad Lauer {Originally published on The Spohrs Are Multiplying}

When I was seven years old, I got my first crush – David Witherspoon from the TV show Our House (and yes I now know Chad Allen is gay). I eventually moved on to Kevin Arnold from The Wonder Years, then Johnny Depp from 21 Jump Street, and the list goes on from there. I knew Maddie would eventually have a crush on a TV personality, but I figured she would be around seven years old like me – not seven MONTHS old.

Madeline has a mad crush on Matt Lauer.

We started to notice it a few months ago. In the mornings she’s fussy, but the second she’d hear Matt Lauer’s voice, she would stop whining and turn her whole body toward the sound of Matt joking with Meredith. We’ve even recorded The Today Show on our DVR so we can play it when she’s especially wound up. It works every time.

Hilarious photos of Maddie follow, so be sure to continue reading…