Little Light of Mine

Friday, Dec. 8, 2017

I'm looking back at our family's picture files from the past year, trying to remind myself what has happened over these 12 months. They have have been a blur for so many reasons.

Tree decorating, Christmas 2017, 22 mo.

This video was taken Jan. 5, when our Christmas tree was still up and I was in the fresh stages of grief over my grandmother's unexpected death. Auden had started walking nine days before this, when we were on a beach in Belize, the day before Grandma died. He was a week shy of 11 months.

I know this is not a revelation, but it feels like one to me: The boy has grown and changed like crazy. We put our Christmas tree up again on Saturday. No longer the drunken walker, Auden helped pull ornaments from boxes and tried to hang them on the tree. His efforts mostly amounted to him to tossing them in between the branches, but I appreciated his attention nonetheless. He followed his sister's lead and took the decorating gig very seriously (though he refused to wear the Santa hat she kept putting on his now curly-haired head).

There have been points this year when the news just felt too dark to handle. But the light from this child and his sister -- it's just so bright. He's a snuggler, a joker, a runner, a climber. He carries his "bebe" doll around, feeds her, covers her in a blanket and kisses her goodnight. He loves to dance and climb, to swing from bars, to greet his sister in the mornings and to say goodbye to anyone (or anything) that is leaving. He is always talking about choo-choos and "AYE-uh!" He repeats all the conversations around him and is forever imitating us (the good and the bad) to the point of both hilarity and (our) shame.

So, yeah, it's been a crazy year. But, thanks be to God for the gift of this beautiful child, who has made me laugh and smile and experience crushing feelings of love a hundred times more often than I have felt panicked by the times.