Life is going forward with two busy boys in our house. Allan is trying to keep up with his big brother and is crawling, waving, pulling up, and getting into everything. Evan is picking up new tricks left and right. He has been working on potty training, learning letters, kicking a ball, jumping, and stringing words together for sentences. I can't believe that in a few short days, my rainbow baby will be 2! How has my sweet little 7lb 10oz bumble bee been here for two whole years already? I think him turning 2 is even harder than when he turned 1. I'm so in love with this ornery little guy and I have a hard time "letting" him grow up (what mom doesn't?!)
My two perfect boys make my heart so happy, especially when they are playing together. At 7 months, Allan is always watching his big bro and trying to keep up with him. He will follow Evan around and grab anything that Evan has. I can already tell they are going to be such close buddies. Family is so important to Brian and me. We are pretty close to our family and want to raise the boys the same way. One of the most important priorities to us is spending time with loved ones. Lillian has taught us many lessons but a pretty important one is: cherish those close to you because we aren't guaranteed forever.
As Evan's getting older, he's starting to have a slightly deeper understanding on things. He's just recently starting to put 3 and 4 word sentences together. It's amazing to watch his little mind churning and then giggle at what he comes up with. I say this because of a conversation we had with him over the weekend. The four of us had packed up and drove to the cemetery like we do every week and it was a pretty nice day so we decided to change out her flowers and get the boys out of the car. It had been a while since we had actually taken Evan to the cemetery since he usually goes to gma and gpa's house during church (we swing by the cemetery after church), and sometimes when he is with us, the weather isn't nice enough so we just stay in the car. So, this was the first time in a while that we had a chance to get out and go see her headstone and tell her we miss her and love her. I was feeling extra emotional that day, I think because Evan's birthday is coming up. Sometimes the pain of her being gone is more present than other days. That day was a little harder for some reason. We sat there at her headstone and just listened to Evan chatter away about the cars driving by or the birds he saw flying. I started talking about Lillian to him some and Brian asked Evan if he could say, "Lillian". Evan looked a little perplexed and thought about it and repeated after him, "wiiiwaaan" I was already choked up but of course hearing him try to say his sweet sister's name was make my heart melt. We started talking about how we come here to talk to sissy and tell her we love her. We asked him if he knew where sissy was. What came out of his mouth afterwards took us both by surprise.
He replied, "sissy sleep"
my jaw dropped.
I have no clue where he would come up with this. Like at all. We have talked about Lillian a handful of times, not because we don't want to, but just because he hasn't been old enough really to understand the concept of a sister. We hadn't talked about her in a while with him and when we did mention her it's usually something like this: "Evan, did you know you have a sister? Her name is Lillian and she's in Heaven with Jesus" We have never ever talked about anything to do with her being "asleep"
To be honest, his answer was upsetting to me at first. The way I looked at it was that I wanted the boys to know first and foremost that 1. they have a big sister and 2. she's alive and in heaven. Sometime way down the road we can talk about how she got there and about death. It caught me off guard that the limited vocabulary he has, he portrayed the part of her physical body being "sleep"ing. Brian and I ended up having a discussion on the way home on what it meant to either of us on what he said. Like always, my hubby reassured my worries and heavy heart. He spoke of the multiple instances in the bible that death is referred to as "sleep". Brian saw it as reassurance that maybe Evan is a little more in tune to his sister and God than we can even imagine. I sincerely hoped all of our kids to have a connection to their big sister, it would be the greatest gift of all. Another thought on the term "sleep", it reminds me that death in this life is not permanent. We are merely in slumber, waiting for our King to return and live forever in His glory.
side note: we did ask Evan to repeat himself when we were at the cemetery and he answered the same exact way. Today I brought Lillian up in conversation and asked him if he knew where she was, and he said, "seep" (sleep).
