So Loved

Yesterday made Tollie three months old. He had breakfast with G'Rod and G'Ro, buttermilk waffles and a bottle of milk, accordingly. He shared lunch with Poppy John and Grammy Sandy at a local pizza place. And then he helped deliver fried chicken to Grandpa Tim and Grandma Jan for dinner.
At the end of a busy day, the beginning of his fourth month here, I whispered in his ear: You are so loved.

JEB

for Hospice

If there's a sadder phrase than "children's hospice," we can't think what it might be.
If there's a better cause to support, we can't think what it might be.
What we do know for sure: The Pleasure Guild throws an awesome party. 

Cheers, to the little one with crimson curls.

Chef Allen, from Chicago.  Best scallops ever.  And new best friend. 

As always, Chef Hubert, thank you.

Jenni & Andy

Painting Heaven

I want to ask Heaven if I can go upstairs to Jesus’ house to see Celia.  Heaven is behind RoRo’s house. Jesus' house is up in the sky there. They have fish and a cage for the muskrat to live in. And stickers, Heaven has stickers. I can go there and say hi to Celia and Colby, then we can play, then I can say bye.

He thinks Heaven is a person.
He thinks Jesus has a street address.
He says goodbye in a see-you-tomorrow kind of way, not a forever kind of way.
Who are we to say otherwise. 

We try to coax memories until the words create the Celia who will live in his mind.  We try to encourage stories, to help whatever persistent little echo keeps him believing she visits our world and he can visit hers.  You can say goodbye to her whenever you, wherever you want, we tell him.  Celia lives in Jesus' house and in your heart, we say.  But really, we mostly listen.  He seems much wiser about all this than we'll ever be.

 JEB

Oh, this baby.

Either you love him, or you haven't met him yet.

 JEB

Tomorrow chases today through my head.

My eyes dart hurried glances at half-done tasks, my mind scans the never-ending list of to-dos.  It’s a race against time, I sense the gap narrowing between the feeding he just finished and the next.  No longer a tenant of my womb, the baby is the landlord of my being, not just borrowing my body but owning my chest, my time.  Tollie's domination of the day makes me feel soft and productivity feel hard.

When I let Tucker guide the schedule, when I don't resist his direction, I find peace.  I lose track of tomorrow and I don't even think much about today.  I feed little brother while I sit benext to the tub, Tuck's face submerged to make "turtle noises."  While we dive into books and collapse into giggles, while we train dragons and travel through his imagination.  When I surrender we are, in some sense of the word, productive.  Tuck's agenda, my attention, will certainly yield results, in good time.

And all too soon, all too soon, Tolliver will share a voice in the daily program.  He'll want more than milk, he may not need me as much as he does now, and I might need him even more.   
JEB

Used To

I used to have a daughter.
I used to have a dog.
There are things now I just have to get used to.

Andy

Pre-reading

As Tuck fought sleep a few nights ago, he asked, groggily, if we could go to the library "to find books about crocodiles and iguanas and sea turtles."  Going to the library to pick books - instead of just to see the fish and to play with Legos and to get stamps on his hand - is something I'd like to encourage, so I agreed.  When he woke the next morning he remembered the request and was eager for the library to open. 

He asks that his door be left cracked at night, with the hall light on, so he can read in bed.  And we find him in the morning with books in his sheets, imprints on his face, pages dog-eared and covers bent.

He shares story time with his brother now, retelling the most familiar tales, and he recognizes the word S T O P, whether on a red octagonal sign or not.

Andy and I haven't been able to talk, for at least a year now, about when to go to the 'Zee oh oh' unless we're serious about going right.this.instant.

Tuck takes pride in adding "words" to the grocery list, and wants to label drawings with their initial sounds, like the rectangle he traced yesterday needed an "R" in the middle.

A few days ago while he sat on the toilet and I sat, as instructed, on the other side of the closed bathroom door, he asked me to bring him a newspaper or nag-da-zine.

Tucker likes to talk about whose name starts with which letter, and commercials for things like pizza leave him saying things like "pizza starts with P!"

We found the reptile section at the library the other day, and Tuck pulled books off the shelf with wild abandon.  He sat in the middle of a big pile, flipping pages and flipping out - in a not-quite-library voice - over the animals he'd discovered.  We  carefully chose three books and sort of carefully reshelved the rest. 

All this getting ready to read may be the neatest part of parenting so far.
JEB