...and by "later," I really meant later

So, this blogging thing...I really have a love/hate relationship with it. Sometimes it just flows, and I'm full of ideas and the posts practically write themselves, and people tell me they liked something I wrote, and it's the most fun hobby in the world. Other times, my mind is a stagnant swamp and I couldn't write anything interesting if my life depended on it, and my insecurities whisper in my ear that noone cares anyway and I decide to just go eat some worms instead of even trying. The pendulum is swinging more to the latter lately, but I figure if the muse doesn't show up, I might do well to just make a discipline of writing and see how it goes. So congratulations on being my guinea pigs! (I mean, you know, assuming you're out there.)

We had milestones since I wrote last. The joyous one was our sweet Pirate Boy's eighth birthday. It seems hard to believe that my cuddly little baby is actually eight. As I said to McGyver, it seems like being eight makes him such a big kid...eight is so close to ten. Thankfully he still likes to climb up in my lap and snuggle, and even if he doesn't stay there for as long as he used to because irresistible things like playing Wii or building Legos beckon, I'll take it.

For his birthday, we had pizza and chocolate cake (both at his request) and he opened up exciting gifts like a new movie, a new fishing pole from Papa, money from Grandma, a Wii game that he and McGyver love to play together...but my favorite part was later that night when all the festivities were over and I was tucking Pirate Boy into bed. I sat on the edge of his bed and brushed his floppy blonde hair back from his forehead and told him about how at that moment eight years ago I was sitting in my hospital bed, having given up on sleep because all I wanted to do was hold him and stare at him. A pleased, thoughtful smile spread over his face as I recounted how excited and happy I was to have that perfect little baby boy for my own. And I've said it enough times that I didn't even need to remind him that no matter how old he gets, he'll always be my baby.

Shortly after we celebrated someone we love coming into our lives, we had to say goodbye to someone we love who left. My grandpa, after 95 years' sojourn on this planet, went home to heaven with his children at his bedside...a good end to a good life. It feels like the sun has gone from our family's little solar system, and even at the funeral I was almost looking around for him out of habit because I've practically never been to a family gathering when he wasn't there. There were fond reminiscences of him from family and friends alike...how he loved to go to Taco Bell for lunch with my dad and his brother and whatever group of friends they would bring along, his reputation as an avid and skilled hunter, the way he always prefaced a discussion with "I have a question to ask you," his straight-shooting opinions and his tough-love approach that was usually just what people needed to hear. One man who had known Grampa since the 1940s said, "I never heard him use a smutty word, and I never saw him lose his temper." I loved that. Above all the memories of my Grampa as a good friend and upstanding citizen, people said over and over that he was a Christian man who had served and loved God all his life. So the heartache is tempered by the knowledge that he really is in a far better place -- praise God, it's not just an empty platitude that people say at funerals -- and that we will see him again. Remember the classy lady with the dark brown hair? He's with her again. And just before the end, he promised to meet the rest of us at the gate. Personally, I plan to hold him to it.

Grampa and Pirate Boy, 2004