The Return of the Card

We have here an interesting coincidence; above is Nathan, with his beloved card on his birthday. Curtis, the second baby born after Nathan, just had his first birthday. Anybody notice anything the same between these two pictures?

My three sons

I do have three. I hereby shout it to the world in the one place I can do so without answering a lot of questions. I lined up pictures of the three of them on my computer desktop and looked at how alike and different they are. Similarities, definitely, but no clones among them, although Nathan and baby 4 do resemble each other more than baby 3 resembles either of the other two. Anyway, just reaffirming an invisible bit of reality.

Blankets

When Nathan was born, my sister-in-law gave us a blue blanket that was satiny on one side and silky-fuzzy on the other. I used that with him when he was in the baby swing, and it seemed to help him calm down better than anything I'd tried using to calm his big sister when she was that age. As he grew bigger and more mobile, the blanket became a little like Linus's blanket. It was in the crib with him at the time of the accident and was confiscated for over a year as evidence. Now it is tucked away in a box with a few of my other tangible Nathan mementos, including a red and white checked shirt that he looked cute in, a pair of green pajama pants that have the elastic all worn out from how chubby he was, and the hand print of his that they made at the hospital the day he died. It's a blanket that I love and that brings warm memories for me, but our family's current state of healing makes it best that it be put away.

However, there is another special blanket also connected to Nathan which I get to see in active use. The year Nathan died, our Relief Society was involved in Project Linus, making blankets to give to kids in hospitals. No one realized at the beginning of the year that one of those blankets would go to us. It's a crocheted blanket in variegated blue that's just the perfect combination of warm and airy. I don't know who made it, but if that person ever reads this, I want them to know that it not only comforted us as we laid it across Nathan that last day in the hospital, but that it also brought comfort to me in the days following Nathan's death, and that it has now warmed two of Nathan's little brothers, the second of which is snuggled up with it for a nap as I type. It's nice having something like that that I know all three boys got to use. I've been very blessed to have two more boys after Nathan so that I can see many things reused.