Capture the Night

I am not going to lie. I will probably be up all night because at five o'clock when Colton headed home and Paul walked in I took a nap a very long nap in mommy time anyway. I slept until 8 woke up and darted out the door to Micheal's with just 2 minutes to do my shopping once I got there as every employee let me know! I made it though. So with all this energy from my nap I decided to get done all the stuff I didn't get done today.

First on the list taking my Trinity for a walk at 11pm. The poor pooch has skipped her walk two days in a row and that makes her very unhappy. It was a short walk because of the time but a walk none the less. I really enjoy walking at night. Even though I was a little leery because of a friend relating a story of being mugged two years ago while walking at night in town but a different neighborhood and with out a dog. So I got past that and just stayed away from the wooded lots because many neighborhood pooches have gotten the skunk treatment recently. I would like to keep this off the list of Trinity's achievements for the summer.

So as I walked on this most amazing summer night taking in the cool air and sounds of nature that summer brings. I slowly let my guard down and I notice the moon and the stars. Something I have always found very comforting. I was thinking about all of my "far away" friends and how they get to see the same moon and stars and some how we are connected to them and each other. I got lost in my thoughts of how there are so many things going on at any given moment in the world. Birth and it's first new breath and there is death's last shallow murmur. War and a fight for peace. Falling in love, hearts breaking. Bad choices, the courage to make good ones. Violence, reconciliation. Sleeping, singing, dancing, weddings. Beginnings and endings. I could go on forever and that's with none of the mundane things like walking my dog or brushing my teeth.

All that lead me to how Lilia will turn one this week. An entire year of moments we have spent together. How from the looks of my back porch you would never guess that I am planning a small get together of our closest friends and family to celebrate the first anniversary of her birth and really the whole year of growth and learning. A rather small party for me anyway. When you are one of four children who all have children of their own and some of those children have children the number 30 seems like a small miracle. This Saturday months of planning and penny pinching will turn into a celebration of my baby girl. I have made with my own two hands many things for her party. I have left no detail unturned. I have been mastering my cupcake skills which still need help.

I have debated things like box cake vs. scratch cake. Types of frosting. I mean really if you saw my pages of notes you would think that I was planning a wedding. Well not if you looked at the budget that is nothing short of a miracle and good planning. None of it though has felt like a burden. My baby is worth the coupon clipping, decoration making, cupcake exploring and even some family feuds that came because of it. Ask me next week at this time and I might have a different idea because I will probably still be up cooking for the next day and dreaming of a pom martini.

All this to say, I have learned that these moments and this life need to be celebrated. I have no idea what next year will bring let alone the next ten. So I am taking it and celebrating it for today. It makes me sad when people pass mile stones in life with out taking a moment to celebrate them. I know that Lilia will not remember a dam thing from her first birthday party but I will. There will be pictures that she can look at and know what sort of day it was. There will even be video which I am sure like every child she will love when she is bigger. I mean really who doesn't love to wonder about what they were like as a baby. I know that if you could come remotely close to showing what love looks like it would be the details of this party, bright colors, creativity, sparkle.

It's after midnight so it is officially my late grandmother's birthday. Happy Birthday Grammy! I will be eating ice cream at some point in the next 24 hours in her honor. The reason is exactly what I am talking about here, because in her life she loved ice cream. On her birthday we would often go and buy all the fixings for huge ice cream sundaes and then sit down and make them together on a normally hot summer night. Then listen to the story about the year she got to have a birthday party with ice cream and her mom's home made root beer. Just once her whole childhood but she remembered it maybe because it was the depression and those things didn't happen often. Or maybe I come from a long line of party people. You see though here it is nearly 3 years after her death and I can still remember that story a moment in her life that I wasn't there for. 3 years seems like a long enough time for me to forget all the bad at the end and just remember the good of all our years together before. I miss her a lot this year. Maybe because of Lilia. She makes me wish all these people were here for her to meet. Grammy & Pop Pop, Her Pop Pop, Pop Tim. I know that maybe it is strange that I wish for my Grandmother more than my father in this moment. It's just that I know how much Grammy would have loved her and how she would have been with her. I know she would translate her baby babble into complete sentences and sneak her treats when I wasn't looking. Life did not afford me enough time with my dad to picture those moments with him. Maybe that is almost a protective sort of bubble. I imagine it would hurt a lot. He would love her though and have some sort of nick name for her those are the absolutes.

This blog has become way more long winded than I anticipated. If you have read this far congratulations. I will let you know that in all this thinking I did while walking right at the end the neighbors dog barked out the window at us and nearly made me crap myself until I realized it was from the window. It broke the silence and my thoughts.