Housekeeping and a half :: by mama

[First, the housekeeping: I am aware that it's been about seven (eight?) months since the last post on this blog.  What can I say?  I started working more this year, and the blog has suffered.  I wanted to keep up with it, but I could never seem to find the time, and as the months passed, a sort of inertia set in.  I started thinking, "Well, it would just be weird to start posting again now, out of the blue, after so long."  And it does feel weird.  But it also feels important.  When I was posting regularly, I sort of thought of this blog as a family journal, a record of our family's activities and adventures, the big and little things that made up our life overseas.  As I wrote, I thought about how it would be fun to look back on the blog years from now, the way one would look back at a photo album... or a very wordy scrapbook.  I want to have that scrapbook (which is getting wordier by the minute, I realize) someday.  And so I am re-committing myself to the blog.  I hope to post more regularly from now on and to fill in some of the blanks from the past months.  Starting now.]

So today was Kaya's half birthday.  For those who have not experienced a Team Hesse half birthday celebration, we don't go all out... we go half out.  Chris once had a surprise half birthday party for me at which I had half a cake and where all the guests were half-dressed (i.e., in their underwear).  It was pretty awesome.  Kaya's half birthday today was a little more tame than that.  I informed him that since a full birthday entails cake and ice cream, he could have half of those things today.  In other words, he had to choose: cake or ice cream.  Unsurprisingly, he chose chocolate ice cream at the Westin.  We had a fun little family outing, and afterwards, when we had family journal time in the evening, he drew a picture:

Since I expect Kaya to be reading this someday as we reminisce about the good old days in Dhaka, allow me to say this.  Kaya, your father and I love you to pieces, to smithereens, around the universe and back again.  You are bright and witty and sweet and affectionate and mercurial and, at age five-and-a-half, still so little boy cute.  I love the sparkle in your eye and your unabashed grin when you are happy.  I love your wacky dance moves when your dad plays your favorite songs on the iPod (currently Millions of Peaches and Sheela ki Jawani, no joke, '90s pop and Bollywood, it doesn't get any better).  I love your little belly.  I love that you are big enough to make your own peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and to turn on the tv by yourself on Saturday mornings and to have an extended conversation about just about anything, whether it is any of your business or not.  I love that you talk our ears off, even when my ears are tired of listening, because I know it will not last.  I love that you love your mama, and I hope that will last.  Mama loves you, Kaya, my half birthday boy, forever.