Dearest Beloveds,

I want to share these anecdotes with you for two reasons. Primarily when I write them down I get to relive my joy. Additionally I savor the stories of my childhood that I have been told. Despite the potential for teasing as they are shared in the years to come - I think they are wonderful, uplifting, amazing. These personality nuggets make up you as you - glorious, unique, and inimitable you. They are treasures because you are treasures.

About a week before Christmas both of you became concerned that you wanted to give gifts.

Dearest Beloveds,

The latest addition to our Homesteading Homeschooling life arrived yesterday. (I think I am am going to combine those into Schoolsteading - like Femivore.) The barn. The barn to house the stuff/equipment that seems to have multiplied in the not even 8 years that we have lived here. It is a glorious empty space and soon will have a gardening niche, beekeeping corner, handtool alley, heavy saw plaza, Tentrr station, and riding equipment boulevard - can’t wait.

Dearest Beloveds,

I was recently on the phone with a social worker who told me there are a lot of resources available to have you two talk to someone about my health doings – therapists trained to talk to children about death and dying and sickness.

My current thinking on this is that until the sky falls, the sky isn’t falling.

Dearest Beloveds,

In some respects these two subjects are related - distractions and street signs. Both of you are right now gazing beyond on a level that you hadn’t before. Watching you emerge into sentient curious aware humans with your own interactions with the wider world is honestly one of the many joys of parenthood. Thank you.

Dearest Beloveds,

I wanted to take a moment and say thank you for our amazing life. Thank you both for being bright eyed and bushy tailed (thank you Baba), for being curious, for being my hearts - jumping and running and balancing through this amazing life. Thank you both for looking out at the world this month and immediately exclaiming to your sibling, “Let’s go catch leaves!”

Dearest Beloveds,

This story has echoes of "when I was your age we walked to school uphill both ways in the snow," but that can't be helped. I want to share this story with you because maybe it will make you feel that sense of time and change that I felt with Aunt Louisa told me that when she was a child there was an actual cow, named Betsy, who lived in the CowBarn.

A cow slept in the building where your father and I spent our honeymoon.

Dearest Beloveds,

I now understand why Tia and I both had the same pogo stick, the same jumping ball, the same wooden flipping ball toy (which I still have for both for you).