My baby,

I found myself questioning my current reality today. I took your siblings to Kennywood by myself. We were standing in line for the Old Mill, I was holding old to my necklace I had on with your ashes in it, and just looking around. It’s such a surreal thing to witness. I was looking around at the woman and her child in front of me, they were enjoying their time together. I was looking at the workers and wondering if they wanted to be at work or if they were counting down the hours till they got to leave. Then I just glanced around at the people families and friends who were walking around and smiling. As people always tell you, life goes on. It’s just so crazy how it moves along.

I’m standing in line with three of my kids and clutching the ashes of my other child in my hand. There should be five of us in that line. How would we sit in the boat if you were there? Would you get as annoyed as I do that the boys love that ride so much? We rode it four or five times today. Each time we must wave to the person working in the room watching the cameras for the ride. I already know you’d wave to them, too. I’m pretty sure the majority of people that ride it wave to them. You’d enjoy the game we play of trying to find something different each time we go in. Today we actually found an armadillo in one of the scenes that we had never seen before.

At one point while we were in a different line, I thought back to my plans of last summer before we lost you. I knew we would go to Kennywood at least once, but would we have bought the passes last year? I know most of these questions I ask myself are useless and I will obviously never know the answer to them, but for whatever reason I love to dwell on them.

We had went to Target on the way home and stopped down the Lego aisle. Elijah and I were trying to figure out which set would be best to get for your birthday so we could do it together. There was a picture one of a wave that I thought would have been appropriate for your love of Hawaii, but Elijah pointed out that he thought it would be too difficult. I’m glad he was the voice of reason, because when I looked at it closer I thought the four of us trying to put that together would lead to some drama. Elijah then pointed out the Hocus Pocus house. I’m going to be honest, I really wanted to just go ahead and say “yes” to that one. You liked that movie, you loved Halloween, and I justified that it would be perfect to sit out as part of our Halloween decor. However, the price of that one was a little steep and I talked myself out of it. Finally, I saw Stitch, but Elijah said that it was “too small”. We walked out of the store with nothing, so I will look over the next few days to see if I can find our winner.

I want to get Lego sets that I think you’d enjoy. We did the Encanto house last year for your birthday because you had really wanted that set and we did the Minecraft crafting table for Christmas because you loved Minecraft. What happens as the years pass and the Lego sets with your “interests” aren’t made anymore? I’m thinking way ahead, I know. The truth is, you’d love any and every Lego set. You did so many different ones and it didn’t matter what it was. Simply doing any Lego set on your birthday will be enough, but in the back of my mind I will worry that it’s not because what if you wouldn’t be “excited about the set”?

I wish my mind didn’t work this way, but alas, it does. Maybe as the years go on I will learn to just embrace it and enjoy the process of building together, which is really why we are doing it.

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