January 11, 2020

I’m simply exhausted, but I have to write this before bed so I can express the gratitude I feel for such a simple but full day, and the joy of spending it with two brave kids who are getting older each day.

First, it was Mina’s fourth birthday. Can you believe it? She can.

She was overjoyed about it and spent the day telling everyone who would listen that she is FOUR NOW! We measured her, and she is precisely the same height that Linus was the day he turned… 3. Yes, the teeny peanut is truly a teeny peanut. But good things come in small packages, and she is certainly a force of nature wrapped in a diminutive, ruffled box. Everyone at her birthday party this evening (and it was a lot of people) commented on how perfectly her shirt went with her enormously fluffy skirt, and I assured them that she had picked it all out herself. My birthday wish for her is that her core Minaness will stay intact all her life, and that none of the outside forces she faces will ever dampen it. Rawr!

In the middle of it all, Linus had his first hockey lesson. He was tossed onto the rink with about 60 other kids, probably 70% of whom were veterans from at least one previous session. This was also his first class without Mina there as sidekick and moral support. He was so small in all of his gear!

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Not the best photo ever, but you get the picture. I’ll do better next week.

I was incredibly proud of him. He had no idea what was going on, and doesn’t yet grasp the concept of just following along with the other kids when in doubt. But he did his best, and each time he skated close enough for me to get a good look at him, he was smiling. I kept thinking that if it had been me out there, so lost and unfamiliar, I would have skated over to find mommy. But he never did. At the end he did yell until I came down to sit in the penalty box, but one coach spent the last ten minutes working just with him and he clearly had a great time. He said he enjoyed it, and is up for going again next week.

So these babies… Babies no more. Heading into the world, slowly but with confidence, and I’m trailing along with my camera and a box of tissues.