March 9 Random Act of Kindness Day for Thomas

When our son died almost nine years ago (I still can't believe it will be nine whole years on March 10--it's an unfathomably long time to be missing your baby), we asked people to do something kind in his honour. Over the years that has become our way of celebrating, remembering, mourning and loving our boy on his birthday.

He lived 20 precious hours that spanned two days. We prefer to mark the one in which his sweet soul entered the world and changed it forever, not the day he slipped back to heaven. Both are equally important, of course. Those two days bookend his short life. But celebrating his birthday is something we would have done with balloons, presents, cake and pictures every year if he'd lived, so it feels right to make March 9 the day we ask people to fill their corner of the world with love, light,  kindness and joy.

The goal is, of course, to send ripples of kindness into eternity. Just because Thomas was once here.

If you're so inclined, please join us. We have an official Facebook event set up if you want more information (there are currently close to 1500 people registered to participate!). But it's pretty simple: all you have to do is keep your eyes open for ways to make the world a little nicer on Sunday March 9. It can be free and take just seconds, but make no mistake--it will change someone's world.

Just like Thomas changed ours.

So I've been knitting up some RAKs (which makes them not particularly random, but that's neither here nor there) in the form of baby hats for Vita Manor, a local centre for pregnant and parenting youth.

Knitting is, as we've discussed, not my best sport. Knitting with double pointed needles? Still a little bit torturous, if I'm honest. It's akin to the feeling you get when you're watching a horror movie: you're always aware that something could go very, very wrong at any moment and you're relieved when it's all over.

I think the crux of the problem is that with crochet you're always working with just one stitch. With knitting you're working with dozens. With double pointed needles you're working with dozens of stitches dangling dangerously from multiple sticks. It's madness, I tell you, madness!

And it pokes at the OCD in me.

But I found a simple, sweet pattern in the Leisure Arts book Warm Hats for Wee Noggins that works up pretty quickly, so I've been carefully knitting away with multiple sticks for the past couple of weeks. And fretting about losing stitches and just waiting for it all to end..only to start again because as it turns out it's kind of addictive.

I mean really, look at this nonsense...

But Thomas is definitely worth the effort of trying wrangle that yarn and master those sticks. 

He is always worth it.