The Island of Misfit Toys

I have been incredibly selfish since everything happened.  One of the first things I got selfish with....her toys.  Khaily went to my mom and dad's for a week after the funeral, because frankly I couldn't function enough to sustain myself let alone anyone else, and while she was gone I would sit in our front room and stare into the playroom.  I sat on the loveseat the day after the funeral and read Heaven Is For Real, and periodically I'd look up and stare into the playroom.  Not expecting to see her, but hating that I didn't.  There were nights when I would stand in the doorway, frozen.  Days when I'd look in and cry.  I knew that while Khaily was gone was my only chance to get the sentimentals out...the things forever marked by Khyri that I just didn't want anyone else to ever touch.  Khaily had asked me not to put sissy's toys in a box, so I had left them out...not wanting Khaily to be sad....it was just too much for her...but then she was in Wyoming...so I seized what I knew was the only opportunity I would have.  The orange tote still sits in my front room.  Her unicorn pillowpet, her vibrating buzzy bug, various chewies from her tiny days, baby dolls, all the things that were hers and hers alone...there is a lot more in their, but as any mother of multiple kids knows, eventually everything blurs together and you don't remember what belongs to who.  Khaily still hasn't noticed, and that's okay...there's something very final about boxing a baby's toys.  Something that says, "I'm not coming home, I'm gone and now these things that were once a neuscence are special and unique and will never be anyone else's...these are my toys, and I am your baby, and since I will never have these again neither will anyone else."  Occasionally I open the box, just to look and remember.  There are toys that didn't fit in the box, like her ride-on dog that aunt Britt got her for her birthday, or her activity block from grandma last Christmas...these things are still in the playroom, but remain untouched.  The piano that was Khaily's when she was one is still smeared with chocolate from Khy's messy fingers, this piano is responsible for Khyri's first supported steps...she pushed it all over the living room.  The toy room has special significance to me now...she was happy there, she played there, her and Khaily would both sit on Khaily's Tinkerbell couch and watch movies in there...it's the one place I could send them when I needed a break and know that they would be entertained and their feelings wouldn't be hurt for being sent off....some nights I go in there and sit in the dark...just thinking about her laugh, her smile, which toys she snuggled with.  I look at the fingerprints on the front of the gaurd of the fireplace (fireplace NOT connected to propane, not hooked up at all, totally non-functional or it wouldnt have been the playroom.)  I look at the "Ks" that me and Jason so carefully decorated while I was pregnant...they hung on the girls' wall in our old apartment and now stand on the shelf in the playroom....some of the decorations have fallen off, but still the significance remains...2 K's...2 kids...2 sisters...2 babies...Khaily and Khyri...I will never ever take down the second K...I will always have 2.