My Isaiah,

I was so excited this morning because the coffee I ordered was being delivered. I was running out, so I ordered a few bags from the coffee farm in Hawaii about a week ago. It’s the only coffee I will drink at home and I never even drank coffee until our neighbors that were PCSing gave us the rest of their one bag before they moved.

The excitement came with a wave of sadness that stayed for the rest of the day once I opened that box. I loved taking you guys to the coffee farm and I loved the smell of it. After buying my coffee, we would all walk back to the car and we would all smell each of the bags. The view of the mountains from the farm was beautiful and we had a lot of memories racing through their grassy area. I smelled the bags of coffee in the van and the memories of you and Hawaii just took over.

After dropping off Lucas, I got home with Elijah and he wanted me to read him some of his favorite Dog Man book. I think we read about half of it, but the entire time my mind saw you as a kindergartener sitting on the couch in Virginia reading one of the books. You’d read before school, to school, at school, once you got home from school, and sometimes at night before you went to bed.

Once we were done reading, we went downstairs because Elijah wanted to play Rudy. We have been playing Rudy a lot since the third week of December. I feel guilty, though, because I wasn’t fully “present” during this playtime. Although I built a pretty strong shelter for Queen Meow Meow, my mind was everywhere. I was thinking about you playing Rudy in Hawaii with us, I was looking around at all the different toys you had played with throughout life, just reminiscing about the past and wondering how the heck we got here.

I did manage to update your Facebook page with another month’s worth of letters, so that is my small victory for the day. I love you more than anything, my baby boy. Goodnight and sweet dreams.