Bath Time

Jackson loves the bath just as much as his big sister did. We’ve started him on the same nightly ritual we had with Hudson, with a nice warm bath before a bottle and bedtime. In not too long, we’ll add books in there, too. As you can see, he’s as big a fan as she was.

At first, we were using the baby tub on top of the kitchen sink downstairs, but this past week, we moved it upstairs into the bathroom, where we always bathed Hudson. Which means that the little blue tub that lived on our bathroom floor every day for most of Hudson’s life finally lives there again. It still has the remnants of Hudson’s diaper cream on the bottom on the toddler side—her teacher at day care was always a little overly generous with the diaper cream, and much of it ended up on the bottom of the tub. Ed scrubbed it and scrubbed it but couldn’t get all the white off.

Lately I have been grappling once again with the reality that Hudson is never coming back, that I will never see her again, that I will miss her each and every day of the rest of my life. Every moment of every day with my sweet boy reminds me of my sweet girl. He’ll keep hitting all the milestones she did, and I will remember. And one day, he’ll start hitting milestones she never reached, and all I will be able to do is imagine.

Only a little over a year out, I am already so tired of missing her. I don’t want to have to miss her for the rest of my life. I don’t want memories and imaginings. I want her. I want her here. Every minute of every day, I want her here.

But I can’t have her. All I get is memories and imaginings, and somehow I have to learn to live with that. For the rest of my life. So for today, I will say that I’m happy that the little blue tub lives on our bathroom floor again. But I hope that white diaper cream stain never disappears.