life lately

daffodil hill in bloom 

all of us

so happy with dad

practicing our crawl

earth day at the rose gardens

9 months

This boy was nine months old on Sunday.

dear james

Dear James,

You're playing golf with your buddies so Finn and I are hanging out this morning. He's napping and I am thinking about the first time I met you. That first night when I saw you at Rockne's when I came home from New York and met my brothers out. I was wearing a black hat with a flower on it I got in SoHo and you told me you liked it and I laughed because I knew it was a little bit goofy. You sat across from me in that booth filled with people and I caught you looking at me a few times and I was telling stories trying to make everyone laugh but mainly I was just trying to make you laugh. 

You told me about your fishing and I pictured you standing alone by a creek in upstate New York. I pictured the trees bare and i pictured you putting your hands in the ice cold water to take the fish off your line. You told me you never kept the fish and I think I fell a little bit in love with you right then. I had a boyfriend and you might have had a girlfriend but we sat together at the bar until it closed and you told me you liked how I didn't have nail polish on my fingers and we laughed when I spilled a tall glass of water on my brother's lap. 

Somehow you gave me your phone number that night and I put in my phone under your last name and I still have it saved that way. We never talked after that night but I thought about you more than once. 

Then I move home from New York heartbroken and sad and I kept thinking about you and wondering about you. I wondered if you had married the girl you were seeing. I wondered if you were still in town or if you moved away to some town by water to be a fishing guide. I randomly asked my brothers questions until I knew the night when I would run into you and I showed up at your bowling league and you saw me and you threw a gutter and turned around laughing. After that night we talked every day. 

It's funny the way things happen. It's near impossible to believe that things happen for a reason when you are in the midst of a breakup and a move back in with your parents and feeling so confused and so terribly sad, but then the smoke clears and you see the most handsome guy wearing a button down bowling shirt who smiles at you like he did that first night at the bar years before and you realize that yes, things do happen for a reason. And you also realize that your life will never be the same. 

James, you make me laugh and make me good. 

giving my acceptance speech

Tuesday

The weather felt like summer. It was almost 75 degrees and sunny. We went to the playground around noon and spent the rest of the day outside. When I pulled my baby out of his carseat at 7:30 at night, his face was covered in sweet potatoes and dirt and he looked just like a little boy should. It was a good day. 

Finn is so funny. How lucky am I that every morning when I walk into his room after listening to him talk to himself and after watching him on the monitor hug good morning to wink and stare at his fish mobile, he smiles and laughs at me. Every morning. He is so excited to see me and I am so excited to see him. It's almost too much to take.

I read a post by one of my favorite bloggers about how she imagined her son talking when he was a baby. She would always wonder what his voice sounds like and what he would say. Now that he is three he talks all the time. His most recent thing is when she puts him to bed and covers him up, as she's walking out of his room he quietly whispers "thank you so much". I love that story.

Finn is not talking but he is so funny. When he blows raspberries with those little lips and spit is trickling down his chin. Or when he sees the vacuum in the closet and gets so excited and scared at the same time he wants to crawl towards it but he also wants to cuddle in my arms. When he holds a toy over his high chair tray and I say "don't drop it" and he gets a mischievous look on his face and then throws it to the ground. Or when he sees his dada walk in the door after work and he gets to excited that he now does this inhale screaming thing. Or when he is done eating and I try and give him just one more spoonful and he turns his nose up and shakes his head side to side. Or when he wakes up after our afternoon nap together and he turns to me and his eyes are still focusing and then he realizes that I am right next to him, that we cuddled through his sleep and he smiles and closes his eyes at the same time. Or every single time I say something goofy and he smiles at me. It's all too much. There is a feeling that I feel for all of these moments, but I can't place the word. They're too sweet. He's too special. He's so funny. And he's mine.

I can't believe that either some days. It seems to hit me especially when I am driving for some reason. I'll be pulling up to a red light and I'll notice in my rear view mirror two little feet kicking in the backseat and I almost have to pull over to catch my breath because that little boy back there, that's MY baby.  My happy baby.

Weirton Easter

Another first holiday for our little family. James asked if we could go down to his Grandma's in Weirton, West Virginia for this Easter. We went back to the little town where James was born. Where his parents fell in love at a bible study meeting and his mom won Homecoming queen and got married and pregnant.

We drove to Grandma Lagod's white and teal house on a little hill above the Ohio River. It was rainy and chilly and quiet. Finn's eyes were so big when we walked into her house filled with pictures and tiny little art and treasures everywhere you looked. We walked around upstairs and saw the wooden toys that Grandpa Lagod built by hand. We explored his workshop in the basement and measured Finn's height on the wooden wall.

We ate a big Easter dinner of ham and lamb and potatoes and kielbasi and salad and pitzells and cookies and green jello with pineapple that my own grandma made for dessert so many times. We never got the recipe from her so Grandma Lagod told me the special ingredients (marshmallow and easy whip, etc) and I had two and a half slices because it was so good and because it made me remember eating at my own Grandma's table surrounded by her special art and treasures.

When the rain stopped and it was just misting we walked around the block. Finn looked at the birds flying into a big oak tree with English ivy growing all around the trunk. We walked up the hill and looked down over the tiny houses so close together. I imagined James riding his bike down that hill when he was a little boy. Smiling and laughing but at the same time being cautious of sticks or stones that might cause him to fall. I imagine he was always a little careful.


We left around five and Finn stayed up for the whole ride home, chewing on his hands (teething has begun) and laughing at me singing.

It was a good day.

finn brought his spoon for the walk