Last year at Christmas you had just turned 2.  You called our tree a “missmiss twee”. When we drove to town we’d stop by the houses decorated with lights and discovered where the best ones were.  You would point and call from your car seat, “dares more missmiss”. Your daddy liked the lights, too.  AJ particularly liked the fake animals and moving figures, as I recall, but all of us found delight in the extravagant displays.  It was always fun finding the longest and fanciest Christmas route to get some milk or stop at the gas station.

The weather is crisp, clear and frosty in the mornings.  There was ice on the horse troughs and as I picked up a stick to crack away the crust so the horses could drink, I remembered that you liked that job.  Poke, poke, poke, you’d say and I had to remind you not to eat the small sheets of ice.  They are frozen mule spit, I told you.  YUK, is right.  I had a friend who used to tell her kids to stay out of the road and warn them that they would end up like this, and she’d show them an old dead toad that was dry and flat. She kept it on hand for this purpose.  I hope my mule spit idea isn’t like the dried toad.  I won’t say that anymore, now that I think about it.

Thinking about the way you’d hike up all those stairs from the barn and back home makes me yearn for you. Climb up on my lap and we’ll read a book. You choose.  Okay, I’ll read the one about the carton of rubber ducks falling off the ship into the sea-AGAIN.  I will read it as many times as you want.  I started a homemade book for you that I will send when I finish it.  It’s a story about change, but that’s not what you will notice about it.  A mouse lives in your old house, I saw it scurry from the kitchen yesterday when I was over there cleaning up a bit.  The story is about the mouse.  It’s a pretend story about a real mouse.  I’m not finished yet and still have to paint all the pictures.  I started doing art again with all my free time.  Maybe the little mouse will paint, too. Maybe she’ll work with clay.  Can’t you just picture her tiny little hands shaping the clay? I haven’t really decided yet. What do you prefer?

It’s Christmas eve and I miss you. Tonight Grandpa and I will drive down to town and find the best of the fancy lights.   We’ll say, wouldn’t our little buddy love this?  And we’ll stare at the lights, thinking about you. Tomorrow will be the day you open the packages I sent.  That makes me happy.  Merry missmiss, little buddy.  Kisses to you, your  mommy, daddy and baby sister.      gma