Happy Father’s Day

Happy Father’s Day to my kids’ daddy, the best daddy in the world, who helps fill every day with the best belly laughs in the world.  We love you so much, my dear Ed. 

I Love...

... to watch how big you are getting.  At your 12-month appointment, your measurements were:

Weight:  24 lbs (60%)
Height: 31 in  (75%)
Head circumference: 47.25 cm (70%)

Grow, Jackson, grow!

I Love...

... to watch you discovering things, like the air conditioner vent.

Sparrows

Thank you to my dear friend, P, for sharing this song with me.  Oh, how well it expresses how I so often feel about my sweet girl.

 

Where are you now in this lonely world?  Is your voice being heard among the birds? 

Where are you, my girl? 

I Love...

... the way you clasp your hand to your mouth when eating to make sure no food falls out.

“I Love…”

I was doing such a great job using a “Baby’s First Year” calendar to keep track of Jackson’s milestones and things that we wanted to remember about his babyhood. Then two things happened. I was diagnosed with cancer (and all hell broke loose), and the calendar ran out of pages.

Every day, he does new and funny things that I want to remember, but I only just came up with a good way to do it: the blog. I am going to start writing quick little posts about all of Jackson’s silly mannerisms and other things I want to be able to look back on someday, including photos. Blogger now has a mobile app, so this should be pretty easy.

Inspired by this wonderful post by a mommy blogger (which is a must-read if you are a parent), I’m going to call these posts “I Love…”

To start with several things I’ve had on my mind the last few days…


I love to watch you determinedly follow Bess back and forth across the room six times in a row, hoping she’ll stop running away from you.

I love to watch you learning to use signs to tell me what you want, including the signs for “Eat,” “More,” and “Milk.”

I love to watch you gently hit yourself in the head when we get to the part in “Five Little Monkeys” where one falls off and bumps his head (and oh, how this reminds me of your big sister, who loved to do the very same thing).

I love the way you grab my face and pull me close for kisses.

I love how you used to refuse to try to walk unless someone was holding both your hands, and now you always insist on holding only one, working so hard on your balance with the other.

I love how when you play peekaboo, you put your hands over your ears instead of your eyes.

I love listening to you babble.

I love how single-minded you are when you are trying to do something. 


I love you, my sweet boy. I hope that one day you will enjoy reading these posts as much as I enjoy the things that inspire them.

So Far Away

Tonight I picked up some food at our favorite pizza and pasta takeout joint. While I was waiting, I couldn’t help but smile at two young girls, clearly friends and not sisters, probably eight or nine years old, sitting alone in their own booth (but right next to their parents’ booth, of course), just cracking up hysterically at who knows what. They would grow quiet and put their heads together and then burst into uproarious laughter and fall all over each other. I remember those days with my little girlfriends so well, even now, well over twenty-five years on.
 
Hudson will never have that. I will never have to lean my head over a booth and tell her and her friend to pipe down just a touch. I will never get to wonder just what she and that friend might be whispering about—boys already? Or just someone funny they saw walking by? I will never get to feel that motherly pride of being let in on the secret at some point or another, knowing that she trusts me enough to tell me something special.

I have been thinking a lot lately about how she seems so very far away from me these days. We live in a town and a house that was never her home, although she visited here from time to time. I wear my hair in a cut she never saw me with. We take walks on routes she never knew. Her little brother grows older and bigger each day, and soon I will no longer have the opportunity to mention her at almost every breath, because he will be older than she ever was and I will no longer have her as a point of comparison. I spend far too much mental energy thinking about cancer, wondering how much longer I will have to be in treatment, how it will affect my life, whether I will really be cured, how I will manage for the rest of my life the fear of the cancer returning. There is too much white noise. I feel like I am missing the essence of it all somehow.

I want more time. I want more time with her. I want more time for her. I want her. I want her.