Sometimes, being a mom sucks.

Obviously, I'm the mom of our house. I get to wipe butts and noses, even when I don't feel like it. I get to pick up poop (animal and human). I get to wipe tears and noses. The payment for this is snuggles at night and happy children who can't wait to see me every day when we spend those brief moments apart.

I'm writing this because today is especially hard for me. Blaze, the Boston Terrier we added to our family last August, had to be euthanized yesterday.

This breaks my heart, but for more than just the obvious reason. Not only had he become a replacement of our last dog, Sophie; who filled a bit of a void that Knox had left behind when he left but he had also opened Zoe up to loving him like a brother. He came to work with me and the kids (he was one of them!). He started having seizures in December, and they were the worse seizures medical literature describes. He lost all bowel movement, had muscle spasms, lost his mind and wandered around aimlessly for a day or so afterwards until he finally remembered who we were and where he was.

Each seizure landed him in the emergency vet clinic to be treated and we started him in an anti seizure medication in January, which stopped his seizures! We were so relieved to have him back to normal (even though it took about three weeks this time from all the medications that were pumped into him and damage to his brain) from the series of seizures he had on New Year's Day. He hadn't had any seizures since that one until yesterday. This made it even harder to make the decision to put him down. The seizures he had yesterday were so non-stop and severe that at one point to poor guy was so scared he bared his teeth and lunged at me. After talking to our vet who lets me call him at home, the emergency vet and our family we decided the safest thing to do (since he had large doses of sedatives at home to try and stop them at home) would be to euthanize him since his seizures were effecting his quality of life and we couldn't find a cause for them.

My problem with being a mom today is that I woke up my daughter in her bed this morning gently to her sobbing. When she fully woke up so was so distraught about Blaze being gone that she cried all through getting dressed, making breakfast and trying to leave for our day. She kicked things and yelled and was furious when I had to tell her that we couldn't go pick up someone else's dog and bring it to work. She didn't want to go to school, because she feels too sad. This is a girl who lives for school, so it really hit home how bad she was hurting.

I called my mom (bless that woman) in tears on the way to work because my baby was hurting so badly and I had nothing left in my bag to make her feel better. Death sucks. Death hurts. Death is something a mom can't even fix. Grandma & Papa made it a little better though.

My Step-dad (who helped my bury Blaze yesterday) offered to come pick her up with my mom and take her to pick a plant to decorate Blaze's spot in their backyard and put rocks around it. So, Zoe went with them this morning. She just got back a little bit ago and is much happier. She 'gave him and his flowers a drink of water' and talked to him. She told him how she missed him. She told him how she loved him. She told him how she was sorry he had seizures that we couldn't stop.

Today is just tough. I'm fine. But, that's about it.