Isaiah Joseph,

Hi, sweetie. I’m exhausted, but I actually chose myself and did something for myself today. Instead of going out, I just stayed home and got things more together in the house. I put some things in the attic, folded about four loads of laundry, and even got rid of some of the boxes that were still half packed and sitting around the house. Now the house is around fifty-five percent complete. Baby steps, that’s how it’s going.

I was in your room today trying to get it a little more together. I want to be able to just sit in there and relax, but it still has things in there that shouldn’t be there. One of the boxes in your room was stuff from the art closet. Maybe it’s because I was in your room, but I started to get mad and upset as I was going through it. I’m left looking at things you used to use and will no longer touch.

I also found all “journal” that was in there. I say “journal” lightly because it looks like I wrote in it for about two weeks in January. I went back through and it was just bullet points about my day; my intentions, something memorable, things for the future, ect. I got to go back and see that even though it was an extremely small snapshot of that year, we did a lot. In the entries, we went to the beach a few times, went to the soccer field, and had shave ice.

The one thing that stood out to me was that during one week, I only wrote one day. On that particular day, you came to the rescue. That was the day that Bella took my Hickory Dickory Dock bowl from childhood and broke it. I was really upset after it happened. My amazing oldest son, took it upon himself to try and fix it. You picked up the pieces of the bowl, got some scotch tape, and went to work. That absolutely heartwarming gesture made it okay that it happened. You didn’t like to see other people upset and would try and fix it whenever you could.

Thank you for everything you’ve shown and taught me. I love you more than anything, baby. Goodnight and sweet dreams.