It's been so long since I've made time to sit and write. My cover photo up top is still of the tiny pair of shoes we used in our maternity shoot just weeks prior to Jude being born. And he is now 2 years old. Life keeps being lived, moments continue to take my breath away, as well as my sleep... and here I sit today just days away from our 2nd son being born. He is aiming to be fashionably late, and I am desperately trying to stay busy. Jude makes that kinda easy ;)
Speaking of Jude: How much do I love this little boy? Let me count the ways!! He is "king of the wild things," as his Grandpa likes to say. And though he is that... full of energy and all things 'rough and tumble'... he is also the dearest boy I have ever known. My face breaks into a smile every time he says "I luh lew" or runs over to me with big pursed lips. He cracks me up with his sporadic "Elaine-esque" dance moves as soon as he knows he has an audience. He's smart and funny and stubborn and playful and slightly OCD about his hands getting dirty and almost entirely potty-trained but not afraid to pee in the living room for the fun of it. He knows how to get mama to laugh by peering out of the corner of his eyes with a grin on his face in full flirty-fashion. And he hates his car seat. Always has. He'd rather be free from the ties that bind, running and jumping and playing. He is my sweet darling Jude. And I have absolutely loved being his mother.
It's wild to think that we are about to become a family of 4. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by baby brother's late arrival...Jude himself was 8 days late. And both times now, I've had a giant basketball belly. There have been moments these last few weeks where I felt I might explode, filled to capacity with baby! And yet...the body stretches and makes more room than you ever thought possible. Being a woman is an amazing thing.
Jeshua and I have had a very interesting and exciting year, and we're still shaking off the exhaustion from it all. As many of you know, we moved to Buffalo, NY last June...on a year's mission to reconnect in Buffalo, as well as help my mom and Lou move back out to Oregon with us. Simultaneously, the year both crept by and...flew. I had severely underestimated what a big endeavor it would be to store our belongings, pack what we'd need, and just...move to Buffalo for a year! I mean...people do that, right? They drop everything and just go places for the fun of it? With a 9 month old? 3,000 miles away? Needless to say, I was wiped out by the time we arrived. And life looked so very different for us in Buffalo than the life we had been building in Oregon. Which of course, we knew. But to then be IN it was a difficult transition. The summer was hot and humid, the winter was long, icy, and about 4-5 months of complete tundra-like temperatures. We were hit with one of the biggest snow storm in Buffalo's history in November, bringing in up to 88" of snow! This storm was so exciting, especially for Jeshua who'd never seen that much snow in his life. We had to snow-shoe down my street just to get out and explore to see if anything was open. Nothing was.
Coming home to Portland this most recent June was an incredible feeling of coming full circle. We had left on June 4th 2014. And here I was flying back in on June 3rd 2015. I did the flight alone with Jude, while 7 months pregnant. And Jeshua made his 2nd cross country road trip of the year, with his brother Joel. Can I just say...moving is stressful. Moving across town is stressful. Moving across the country...twice...with a baby and while pregnant...is a whole new level of crazy. But we did it. And we felt victory in that. We got my mom's house sold, we got her moved to Oregon, and our vision, our goal of being together became a reality in those moments of coming back to Oregon. It took soooo much work. But we did it. And now my mom lives 0.9 miles away down the road and can come over for coffee anytime she wants <3 I can say "Hey, I'm running out the door to the store, wanna come?" And she can say, "Sure!" I haven't live din the same city as my mother wince 2005, the summer after graduating college. And really, that was just for a summer. I haven't really lived in Buffalo since I was 18yrs old in the year 2000. It had been 15 years since living an everyday life with my mom. To have her so close by is a gift; and to watch the budding relationship between her and Jude...it's exactly what made this last year so incredibly worth it. This was what it was all for.
...what a difference a year makes...
Signing off,
the soon-to-be-mother-of-two-little-boys
How sweet it is ... xoxox