“A portrait of my children once a week, every week, in 2015.”
Lillia: This week you have been terribly sick. Unlike your brother, you’ve enjoyed relatively good health this year up until this point. It’s nice when you’ve had enough illnesses to actually have an immune system, isn’t it? On Friday you were doing really poorly in the morning — you said your head hurt terribly, and felt heavy, and your tummy hurt. Unfortunately, you had already been out of school one day earlier in the week, and I really felt you should at least try to make it through the day. Your father was much more concerned about you, though, fetching you Tylenol, water, and whatever else you demanded. Our dynamic is interesting — you’re definitely a daddy’s girl, which I think is very sweet (though I do get mildly frustrated that I always have to be bad cop!). I’m so happy that you have such a great relationship with your dad, and I hope it always stays that way.
Zane: This week you are scheduled to go on your first ever sleepover at Nanny and Papa’s house (my parents). Originally, you were supposed to go last night, but the snowstorm postponed it until tonight. The whole thing is actually killing me. You see, you and I have never spent a night apart in your whole life; that’s 3 years, 5 months, and 23 days that we’ve been sleeping side by side. You are so excited about spending the night at their house, but I can’t help feeling completely gutted because we won’t ever be able to go back to a time when we had never spent a night apart. There might be some parents reading this who think I am being melodramatic, but for me this is really hard! Zane, you are my baby and, barring some miracle, my last baby. I know from having watched your sister grow up that once you let go of the baby stage, it’s over. Time moves faster and faster, and pretty soon your babies are tweens. Tweens certainly have their charms, too, but this whole growing up and leaving thing? I’m so not a fan.