two

Dear Hank,

You are two! It is hard to get the right fingers to stay down while you hold up the ones that show your age. Plus you'd rather just keep your thumb in your mouth. But you are thrilled to be two. You are such a big boy now! You asked for a rainbow birthday, with party hats. Your idea inspired our big sister birthday project this year - rainbow seeds to remember Celia. You liked helping count the Skittles.

At two, you are beside yourself with enthusiasm for farm animals. And zoo animals. You drew a lion this morning, lots of wild orange lines, and asked for tape to hang it up.
You are so polite. Like, I can't even handle it when you ask Siri to play a song (Sugar Butter Flour, from Waitress) and then say "Thank you, Siri" once she complies. My very favorite thing right now is the way, when you're done with a meal, you hold up your plate and say "Thank you dinner Mama." It almost makes second breakfast and eighteenth snack survivable.
I also love the way you still want to hold my thumb. And the way you are so easy to put to bed, milk-book-big hug-little hug-blue bed-love you-lights out. There are so many things I love about you, Hank, and almost enough coffee to keep up.

You scare us with your developmentally appropriate yet very dreadful risk taking. Your unspoken motto seems to be: under prepared and over confident. You spend a fair amount of time doing wooden puzzles, and the rest of your time is mostly devoted to polishing mischievous moves. At school pick up you track your brothers down like a cop with a warrant. It's hard to be away from them all day. At home you follow the big boys around, a balloon on a string attached to their wrists. Is there something about being the younger sibling that pushes your personality toward fearlessness?  Please may you develop the wisdom to know when your brothers are doing something unworthy of imitation!

Physically, you are a force to be reckoned with. The solid heft of you, a hay bale with limbs. Your hair the color of olive oil, silky and still with that faint scent of babyhood. Your feet like little sausages, too cushiony to fit most shoes. That little scar under your left eye that might accidentally always remind us of tile shopping. You are, to put it simply, as handsome as you are hilarious.

You are our fourth child, our family's chaos coordinator and our second wind. You are growing less little every day, ever-unfolding. How lucky are we to grow with you? We are fairly forthcoming about how frightening is was for us to decide to invite another child into the world. Our desire to go ahead with hope, to try for one more healthy baby, was just a bit stronger than our doubts. And what we've come to believe is that there is a force in the universe forever on the side of those brave enough to trust it.
And we believe in you Charles Hanley, our littlest big, brave boy.

Love you always.
Mama

Early March

So far, so good. So good.
Even when things have felt absolutely bananas: the swirl of young life, mid life and end of life all mashed up with dinner parties and wedding details, big projects and daily chores, birthday magic and ordinary mayhem.
March is my favorite, no matter what's going on.

Nine

Dear Tucker,

Nine years ago, Riverside sent us home with a perfect, wiggling, helpless infant.
Along with your arrival came this nagging sense that, the second time around, I should know what I was doing, that I should be sure.
Despite having done it before, despite degrees from accredited institutions and jobs in which we were charged with caring for actual human beings, despite a bank trusting us to pay our mortgage and licenses that let us drive cars, we were pretty unsure.
And still today, trying to provide answers to a curious nine year old, I am far from confident.

Basically I feel ridiculously unqualified and endlessly grateful to be your mom.

I gave birth to you, Tucker, but you gave me life.
You are nine now, at the intersection of youth and everything that lies beyond.
You are a boy who is a bit of a mystery, equal parts the age you are and all the ages you have been.
You are quick to say yes, to go along with the plan, to share what is yours.
You have helped us spot the difference between trivial and tragic since the day you were born.
You wear a smile that could be seen from outer space.
I hope you will always see yourself the way I see you, courageous and capable, resilient and wise, kind and handsome.
You love Zelda and brain teasers and comics and nature and transposing piano music, but you seem to love your brothers the most.
You dream of extraterrestrial communities and tiny tardigrade colonies in our own backyard.
And I dream a million dreams for the world you're gonna make.

All my love, forever.
Mom

marriage party!

We don't have pictures of the bride and groom together, or of the actual ceremony, or of the boys in their ridiculously cute matching bow ties, but we had lots of fun celebrating Kate and Kevin this weekend, and wish them many, many happy years together.

thin slices

Often brief but always bright, there are thin slices of joy throughout our days, every single day.

to do

Stay glad.
Take stock.
Make stock. Or muffins, whatever.
Help plan a wedding.
Watch the birds.
Write more love notes.
Organize closets.
Sleep.

turns out

Turns out you can count on it to happen, on little things to go wrong.

I put the boys to bed this evening, preheated the oven for Andy's dinner right before he texted that he was heading home. Poured wine. Began to unload the dishwasher, putting a few vases away in the old hall cabinet. The entire shelving system collapsed.  Glass everywhere. Good news: the cacophony did not wake the boys. And although pretty much a million mason jars were shattered, none of the blue vases I'd been collecting for my sister's wedding were broken.

Several weeks ago our water meter broke and was leaking in the basement, the unfinished part, fortunately. The city worker who came to fix it actually created a much larger problem, accidentally. Water flooded our driveway and froze, a private ice rink. Neighbors knocked on our door daily, to make sure we were aware of the situation. The sump pump ran non-stop for weeks and the front yard has been bull-dozed. But water did not sneak into our new home. And we hadn't begun to landscape. And the boys LOVE mud.

We needed to mop after men traipsed in and out, through the mud, replacing the meter, again.
Grandparents offered to have the boys, and the clean up work was much easier without "help" from small people.

We wrecked a rental van, twice, on vacation a few months ago. We received notification in the mail that it has been repaired and paid in full by the credit card company through which we arranged the rental.

All this recent rain and our chimney is leaking, a lot. A big masonry bill looms, but also, our tax return is on the way.

Last week, my sister didn't have all the official paperwork she needed to get married next week. At the courthouse, they were sent away from the probate desk, taking what they did have down to the magistrates. They watched various interactions from the end of a long line, and hoped they'd wind up in front of the guy on the left, the one who seemed most affable. The one who was able to verify information online and send them back upstairs to the marriage license clerk.

Turns out you can count on it to happen, on little things to go right, like choreographed grace.