Dear Lily

Dear Lily-

You're in the bathtub and I'm sitting on the toilet typing.  We had a lovely weekend with Grandma and Grandpa Hammer and you were such a great kid. You're so grown-up. It surprises me sometimes just how much you know and how much you can do. I love your personality and your spunky little spirit. I relate to you and feel such a connection to you when you get mad, frustrated, sad, embarrassed.... How you act and react during those times seems exactly how I'd like to. You can verbalize your frustrations in ways I can't (because screaming and hitting isn't acceptable when you're an adult) and I just love you for your authenticity. I doubt this makes sense- I'm trying to say-quite un-elequently that- I love you just how you are and that I think we have very similar personalities. Your daddy sees it, too, and seems to know what he's in for.

You've taken to being scared of pretty much everything lately. It started with a plastic ghost around Halloween and has spread to owls, snowmen, our bedroom lamps and our guitar.  We had to take down all of the owl decals on your walls and throw them away. You'll no longer drink out of a cup that has an owl on it. We usually sleep together on Friday nights, but you won't even go into our room any longer because you swear there are scary dogs on our lamps. The guitar, though... we haven't figured that one out yet.

I want you to know how much I love you. I have been thinking a lot lately about whether we add pressure to you because of your brother's condition.  I wonder if we push you more. You're a bright kid and we want to give you all opportunities to be an empathetic, smart, cultured kid... I just want to make sure we're not trying to compensate for Rowan's Lissencephaly and inability to do certain things by encouraging you to take on more?? I'm sure I'm over-thinking this, but I want to make sure we always remember that you're you independent of him and that we don't think of you as the one with abilities, the one who will go to school, the one who will be in sports. You're an amazing kid and, again, I love you just as you are.

Love, Mommy

Music to my ears

That is all.

Dear Rowan

Dear Rowan,
I've been thinking back to this post and to how I felt a year ago.  It was like you were with us one day, and the next you weren't. Seizures had taken over your little brain and what was there working basically failed. Your strength was tapped, appetite done, and eye contact gone.  For me, that was the most difficult aspect of you being sick. I missed connecting with you so much. It wrecked me that I couldn't engage with you one of the most intimate ways. I truly thought I'd lost that forever.

There have been countless times in the past couple of weeks that I've been moved to tears, Rowan. I lay on the floor next to you and we talk back and forth- and you look at me. You look right into my eyes and you engage and participate and act silly and wrestle. You look into my eyes and smile the sweetest, kindest smile- almost like you're telling me everything is alright.

Connecting with you is something I hope to never take for granted. I don't know how long we'll have you in our lives, and I don't know what the next year will bring for any of us- but as long as we have each other, we'll be ok.

I am certain you know you're loved. And I certainly know I am by you. Thank you for that, my dear.