Crying Over Waffles

Miles' birthday breakfast...

 waffle with butter (no syrup), warm chocolate milk with a red straw and vitamins...

his morning usual.

Tonight is such a hard night. We were deciding what to have for dinner. Trying to be creative with an empty fridge. What's better than breakfast for dinner? We always have pancake mix on hand around our house. So we decided to have waffles and bacon. As I'm cooking dinner I played this beautiful CD by Paul Cardall, and my mind was racing of thoughts of Miles. He LOVED waffles! He would ask for one every single morning. Mostly he loved the butter in each square, I was on to him. He would eat all the butter out of each square and then eat the waffle. Making him a waffle and warm chocolate milk was our morning routine for so long. I miss it so much!

Tonight as I was making waffles for dinner I remembered making breakfast for the family just over a year ago, the night before we left for our family reunion. That night I found myself in the same position as tonight, trying to figure what to eat for dinner with an empty fridge. It had to be something everyone would eat. Breakfast!! Miles was so excited when I told him we were going to eat breakfast for dinner! It was like a dream come true for him. What a treat to have breakfast (with lots of butter of course) for dinner! I distinctly remember sitting around the table as a family talking about how much fun we were going to have as a family at our upcoming family reunion that weekend. We talked about all the cousins we would be seeing. As we named each one Miles got more and more excited. His face was so full of joy and excitement, which in turn made me so excited. It was going to be a great weekend as family.

I haven't made breakfast for dinner since that night over a year ago. I didn't really think about that when we decided on it tonight, but as I was cooking dinner I just couldn't keep my heart from breaking into pieces. Durning the dinner prayer the tears finally broke through and I excused myself for some alone time. I grabbed the car keys and headed out the door to the car. I didn't go anywhere, I just sat there and broke down. I cry a lot in the car. It's a sort of safe haven I suppose. A place I can let my guard down and just fall apart, yet I feel protected and secluded within it. Poor Vivian was so worried about me leaving, but I had to breakdown without her seeing. I needed to fall apart alone.

After I pulled myself somewhat together we had family home evening and then started working on some projects in the kid's room. We were making some much needed changes in the children's room. It was too much for me. We bought Vivian a big girl bed months ago. I cried when we did that. I felt guilty and cheated that Miles didn't get one. Due to the bigger bed we needed to move some pictures up higher so she didn't hit her head on them. Mark wanted to move them somewhere else completely for safety reasons, which I understand, but I just couldn't do it. It was just too much change for me tonight. Miles loved falling asleep as he looked at those pictures. I watched him do it many times as I rocked Vivian to sleep as a baby and I would just watch him fall asleep. Vivian also likes to look at those pictures on the wall next to her bed. After breaking down again Mark was kind and let me keep them in the same place, just higher up.

I know these things seem silly, but you don't realize how hard things are sometimes. It's the little things like cooking or moving pictures that are the hard things. You are so emotionally vested in these things. All your heart and soul goes into these things as you do them for your children. These are the small and simple moments that are so hard to do on a daily basis. Ones that were just too much for my aching heart tonight.