I Will Celebrate

Happy Birthday, firstborn.  

You would be two years old today.  You should be two years old today.  We should be celebrating and I should be marveling over the many milestones you’ve met.  I should be anticipating the person you will be one day in the future.  I should be admiring you and how you are such a cute, sweet little boy with such a big personality.  I should be talking about how hard it is to believe that two whole years have already passed since you were born.  I should be saying how hard it is to remember what life was like before you came along.  This day should hold the tiniest twinge of sadness as I realize that you are growing up way too fast.  

What I Miss the Most...

I miss my little man.  I miss all the things that I will never get to experience with him. I will never see him head off to his first day of school.  I will never see him play ball, or get a driver’s license, or go to prom, or get married, or have children of his own.  I will never get to bake Christmas cookies with him, or dye Easter eggs, or go trick or treating.  I will never see him ride a bike or hear him talk about what he wants to be when he grows up.  I will never know what he would be doing now, at almost 2 years old.  It hurts to miss what I’ll never have.  It hurts just as badly, maybe even more to miss everything I already had.  I miss walking in the nursery to a smiling, happy little boy every morning.  I miss taking him to my bed and us cuddling while I drank coffee and he drank milk.  I miss him being in the kitchen floor stirring imaginary ingredients with a wooden spoon and mixing bowl while I cook dinner.  I miss the days I was brave and he was stirring dry oatmeal with a few raisins.  I miss shaking my head in amusement at his appetite because, of course he was stopping to pick the raisins out and eat them.  I miss seeing him “snap” his fingers and call for “Wilwy” while chasing after her.  I miss laughing at Lilly dodging him as she isn’t a fan of having her eyes poked or tail pulled.  I miss him running to the door and tugging the handle while saying “ouside, ouside”.  I miss him banging his empty sippy cup on the high chair and demanding “more, more” milk.  I miss running my fingers through his crazy, crazy hair and debating about whether or not I should get it cut.  I miss him wrapping his chubby little arms around my neck and running his fingers through my hair.  I miss begging him to sit still long enough for me to read just one full book to him.  I miss counting with him and hearing him always end with “8”.  I miss talking to him about colors and hearing him declare every color “blue”.  I miss the sound of his voice and the sound of his laugh.  I miss the smell of his rancid, fat little feet.  I miss him squealing with delight when I turned the water on in the bath tub.  I miss being called “mama”.  I miss seeing him dance to oldies music while I wondered where in the world he got his moves.  I miss the wet, slobbery, wonderful kisses on my cheek.  I miss the kisses he would blow from across the room.  I miss reading him our Bible verse of the day and him asking me to read it again and again, “’gin, ‘gin”.  I miss seeing him run to the door, bouncing up and down, yelling “Da, Da” when his Daddy came up the driveway from work.  I miss the way he would look me in the eye, shake his head, and say “no, no, no” all the while, inching his hand closer and closer toward an electrical outlet.  I miss how excited he was to see me at the end of the day or after being apart for a while.  I miss telling myself “Yes, being the mom of a toddler is the hardest, most exhausting thing you’ve ever done, but one day you will miss this. Enjoy where you are. Be in the moment!”  I miss being naïve and thinking that something as horrible as child loss happened to other people and even though it was something I worried about, it would never really happen to me.  No doubt, what I miss most is everything I’ll never have and everything I already had.