My sweet boy,

There’s been something I’ve been putting off because I didn’t want to face looking at it. As you know, I have all the school pictures of you and your siblings displayed in some hallway. It was in the downstairs hallway in Hawaii, behind the nugget in the living room in Virginia, and now it’s in the hallway to our bedrooms here in Pennsylvania. The pictures that have been in there are Ellie’s fifth grade picture from a few months after we lost you, your spring picture from about two months before we lost you, Lucas’ Pre-K picture from Missouri when he had just turned four years old, and Elijah’s picture wearing his graduation gown from Pre-K in Hawaii before we moved.

School pictures were taken this year around the second or third week of school in the beginning of September. I’m cheap and ordered just the digital prints because we didn’t need all the pictures in the cheapest packages and the cheapest packages weren’t cheap. I got the digital downloads emailed to me at some point in the beginning of October. I had sent them to Gma to see and she printed them off that day and had them at her house, but I didn’t.

I kept telling myself it was too much work and too annoying to order it and pick it up at Walmart. I mean, who has time for that? I also couldn’t possibly order it online and have it delivered to the house because that would take way too long and I didn’t want to wait. Naturally, I thought the better solution was to just do absolutely nothing.

Yesterday when I had to get all the pictures for Lucas’ Star Student board, I quickly went ahead and got an 8x10 of each of the school pictures ordered so I could pick them up, too. I brought them home yesterday and they continued to just sit on the table.

This afternoon I walked past the table, didn’t give myself time to think, and just went to grab the picture frames. I changed out the three pictures and took a second to just look at the wall. I don’t like it, it makes me uncomfortable.

Here I am now being forced to see your siblings age, while you stay the same. Lucas looked like a little baby next to your picture before, now you are just months apart from each other.

Each day brings something new and it’s so hard. I love you more than anything, baby boy. Goodnight and sweet dreams.