My dear Keston,

I was up very late last night (it was a Hallowed Eve, after all), long after you and Mummy had gone to bed to prepare the house for your birthday party today.   I was deep in the middle of washing the floors and was idly rinsing the soiled mop when I was suddenly overcome and nearly burst into tears standing there over the sink of dirty, grey water.    I don’t know why it suddenly hit me, but I was going to have a 2-year-old boy the next day and it suddenly rushed in on me.    It’s not like I didn’t have warning, of course…your mum and I have been hard at work preparing for this day for some weeks if not months, but…I guess I suddenly stopped to think about it.    Something as mind-numbing as mopping will do that to you.

Two years old — a whole 730 days gone by where you have been in my life, spicing it up, making me both laugh my ass off and pull my hair out, where my heart has seemingly both grown 50 times its size and I have found a wellspring of joy and happiness that — well, frankly, I’m a sour old man — I didn’t think existed in this world anymore.

And yet, there you are, day in and day out, excitedly running up to me with a, “Daddy!   Daddy!” and then your usual string of words and babble as you struggle to bring me up to speed and take me in to play on the floor with you and your trains.    Or as we’re wrestling and rolling around on the floor and we’ll stop and look each other in the eyes and you’ll push your nose in for an Eskimo kiss.     Or how you stand there on your stool, intent on being right there as my kitchen helper, partly because you want to know what I’m doing and your curiosity is almost boundless, but mostly because I’m there, and if being on a stool in a kitchen means being close to me, then you’re happy.    And so am I.

Two years ago by now we were probably hanging out in the recovery room, cooing over you wrapped tightly in a bundle and wondering what was coming next and marveling that we were now at the end of one part of the journey whilst simultaneously starting in on a much larger, unexplored one.    I think at that point my heart was so torn in different directions that I didn’t know what to think of the entire experience and now…well, I couldn’t have imagined where we’ve been so far.    I’m really excited to see where we’re going next.

I find it difficult to express into words exactly how much you consume me every day and how much I enjoy that feeling, no matter how difficult it sometimes is or how much it taxes my mind.   You are that which I think of first every morning and the person I think of every night before I fall asleep.    For nobody else do I awaken at 4:30 in the morning and get out of bed just to hover quietly by your crib to make sure you are still breathing, and safe, and warm.     Everything I do when I’m around you has some Keston-content within, whether it’s watching out to make sure you don’t get hurt, wondering how you’ll figured into plans, or simply wondering what you’re up to and what you’re thinking.

I feel like your 2nd year of hanging around this blue-green ball will be an exciting, pivotal one, as you are now getting to the point of being able to really communicate, to put words into complex sentences, to have enough vocabulary to really express yourself, and we are already starting to have some cute little conversations.    You get this big huge grin of satisfaction on your face when you say something, ending in a question, I say it back and give you an answer, and you smile huge as you say enthusiastically, “YES!”   I think you realize that we’re really starting to make some progress on this speaking-thing and within short time, we’ll really be able to pass around information and be on the same page.

I look forward to it, because if nothing else, you’ve taught me that there’s always something more about you that I want to know, and I want to understand what’s behind those dancing baby blue eyes of yours, your funny facial expressions, eyebrow lifts, and hands tossed up in a shrug while a stream of half-words come out your mouth.    And some day, when you’ve progressed far enough and understand a whole lot more, you’ll be able to read what I’ve written here and know how very much your daddy loves you and how he can’t wait to be your daddy this next year — decade — century — FOREVER.

I love you so very much, my big beautiful boy.   A very happy 2nd birthday to you.

Love,

Daddy

I have obtained for myself a regular little helper, a little guy who’s always around when I’m trying to get supper going or dishes washed at night before settling down for a good game of trains.   Once lured by the sweet serenades of PBS kids’ shows, he now finds himself irresistably drawn to the kitchen and the perch ontop of his little red stool, watching intently everything that happens and commenting on it all the while.

We were so engaged the other night as I worked up a batch of Grandma Farwell’s Hearty Split Pea Soup, one of those soul foods that is perfect on a colder night and brings back memories of a small slice of something homey in the strangeness that was four years of college.  Keston had assumed his normal place on his stool at my side, watching intently as I whittled away at the various ingredients and explained them out loud, which he would repeat.

And so we put peas (peeees), a ham bone (meaties), chopped onion (on-on), and carrots (care-rot) into the crockpot along with some water.   Then I opened the spice cupboard and pulled out a bay leaf and some thyme.    I looked over and he had a very concerned look on his face.   He looked up at me.

“Leafs?”

I laughed.     “Yeah, buddy, they’re special leaves called, ‘spices’.   They make things taste good.”

“Daddy….leafs???”   His confusion was pretty clear that he couldn’t figure out why I was putting leaves into our food.   I thought for a moment.

“Well, they smell good,” I explained.    This brought from him a wuffing noise as he pulsed air through his nose.    He has always smelled so good (babies, toddlers, parents, you know what I mean) and so sometimes for a goof we go and rapidly sniff him on his cheeks and neck which usually gets a peal of giggles out of him.   “Right!”  I said.

I proceeded to get down the container of cinnamon.       “Here, Kes, smell this.”  I showed him by sniffing it first with the same whuffing action and then I stuck it under his nose.

He gave it a shot.    “Mmmmmm!!” he smiled and hummed afterwards.     We then tried several others — basil, dried onion, parsley, thyme, and salt, just because I wanted to show him that they didn’t ALL smell.     He clearly liked some and was turned away by others, but it was a cute and interesting educational exercise.

We got done with that and I stirred everything together in the crockpot before putting it in the base and turning it on for a long, slow simmer.    “Seeee!    Seeee!”    I get interrupted about 300 times every night cooking because his vantage point from the stool isn’t enough and he wants a better look.    So, I hoist him up in my arms and he leans way over and gives the stew a long, hard, investigative gaze.

He turns back to me and points.     “Daddy….LEAFS!?”

Emeril, eat your heart out.

Despite the weather being a bit odd this year in Iowa, having an unusually cool summer and weird rain patterns, it seems to have fit the pumpkin vines’ preferences perfectly, as my father was able to raise a bumper crop of the beautiful orange fruit this year.    This prompted us to take our son Keston over to his grandfather’s place to paw through the many different offerings and pick the biggest and best of the bunch.   Aunt Katy came along for the fun, too, because really — she’s just a kid at heart.

Although it was near sunset and the wind was blowing around 75mph, the lighting was perfect and the conditions certainly didn’t deter Keston from trying to choose every single pumpkin in the patch as his own.

The weather the other night was so nice, it would have been a shame had we not gone out and enjoyed it, so we tripped up to Clear Lake (which is anything but clear) and enjoyed some time outdoors.

Future Sturgis Enthusiast

Dueling Flags

Don't Fence Me In

Sometimes I just...think.

Orange and Blue? Why, because it's...coordinated?

I'm Coming Up!

Receipt Required for Return

I Talk with My Hands

30-Second Rule

A little bit of fun outside on a sunny Saturday afternoon with a volleyball can’t be all that bad, right?   My son, Keston, thought it’d be a fine time to practice his ball-handling skills and understanding of basic physics.