Three months...

have passed since the horrible events of December 14, 2012 at the Sandy Hook Elementary School.

I still think about those kids, every day. I remember their names and I've seen their faces and I've read about their painfully short lives. Noah Pozner still haunts me, still makes me hold my own son a little closer. Newtown made me a better mother. A more patient mother. A mother who is never too busy to take a few minutes out to watch something silly or listen to an age-old knock-knock joke that I've heard a thousand times and probably told myself when I was seven. A mother who swallows her exasperation when it's an hour past bedtime and my son is calling me yet again. Only this time, it's for one more hug, which is gladly given, with an extra squeeze thrown in. My son and I call it the enormous, tree-monkey hug. And there are never enough now.

For anyone who staunchly opposes any sort of gun control in the wake of what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School, I urge you to read this blog - written by Noah Pozner's grandmother. See for yourself, by reading through her Noah posts, just what happens when a six year old is murdered, along with his nineteen classmates and six other adults. Read the links concerning what gunshot wounds can actually do to a little boy. Read about the grief and the shock and the anger and even the guilt. And then come back and tell me why assault weapons shouldn't be banned, why gun control laws are just fine the way they are, and why universal background checks aren't necessary.

Go on. I'll wait.