My baby boy,

Hi, sweetie. I miss you so much. Your brothers are getting a lot more physical and crazy, you would have loved it. Granted you probably still would have gone too hard and hurt them because of your size, but it happens. This morning they wrestled each other to the ground because Elijah tried to wear Lucas’ socks to school.

I feel like having kids has helped me in therapy more than anything. Once you guys came along, I was very aware of what I was saying around you guys and how I was acting. However, I’ve learned so much through therapy because of you guys it’s unbelievable. For whatever reason, when you guys are brought into the picture with things it’s much easier for me to understand and see.

Yesterday I was in therapy and was talking about how Ellie is very bossy now and how she was mad at me because I told her she had to go to school. The conversation led the therapist to point out that Ellie has gone through three significant life events this past year, the loss of you, moving away from daddy, and moving across an ocean and a country. She said since Ellie is already anxious, maybe her wanting the house to be so clean is her trying to get control since life seems to be out of control. My therapist then looked at me and said, “you do the same thing”. My mind was blown and I found out that I passed on another lovely issue I have to Ellie. Once she told me about Ellie and I both doing it, I suddenly went through what I wanted to say to Ellie about it and thought I should just take my own advice. We apparently need to become more comfortable with being uncomfortable. I’m supposed to acknowledge the feeling and then sit in and not try and change it or make it better.

Do you want to know what’s crazy? I’ve been saying the same thing about my grief with you, I need to sit in it. For whatever reason, it never occurred to me that I need to do that with every emotion. I guess the grief with your loss is so huge that I thought it got special treatment, but apparently that’s the treatment for everything.

I went to Sam’s Club today with Elijah. He was not happy I didn’t go for the two hours he was in school and that he had to come. We had been out that way before, probably around six-ish years ago? We had come back to Pittsburgh for Christmas and was still there on New Year’s Eve. Daddy was at the border because we found out five days before he left that he was leaving. He ended up being gone for four months that time.

It was just me, you, Ellie, and Lucas. Elijah wasn’t even born yet. It was just us hanging out that New Year’s Eve because everyone else had plans. I promised you guys we would go to Sarris to get ice cream and you were all so excited. Once we got there, I found out that they actually closed an hour or two earlier because of New Year’s Eve. Obviously, you guys were disappointed. To try and make up for it, I found a Dairy Queen that was about fifteen minutes away from where we were. We drove over there and ate our ice cream in the parking lot. We passed that Dairy Queen today and I pointed it out to Elijah and told him the story.

I ended up putting you guys all to bed that night and then ended up getting into an argument on the phone with daddy. I spent a good amount of holidays alone with you guys. Sometimes it was just us for Christmas, Easter, and almost every single Valentine’s Day. You all were the best part of every single one of those days.

Elijah was sad when I picked him up today. He said that he just missed you. He was playing with magnetic blocks in school today and talked about how you guys always made the houses for cats vs. pickles.

I love you more than anything in the world, my baby. Goodnight and sweet dreams.