It hit me...

I think it finally hit me this morning that Eli will be 1 in just 8 days!  Sure, I've been planning his party and counting down the days but it still didn't seem real.  It wasn't until last week that I realized I needed to get some food in my house (other than party food) because in just a few days we're going to have several people staying with us and they'll need to eat :)

I also realized that until recently, I have not dared to let myself imagine him making it to this birthday.  I don't mean that I really thought he'd die... I really don't know how to explain it.  Our only real experience with 1st birthdays was Logan's.  We weren't thinking about presents or smash cakes or photo shoots.  And even though I've been planning Eli's party for quite a while, I haven't really stopped to think about what it's all about, a whole year of blessings!

Even though everything with Eli has been so different than with Logan, I kind of feel like this birthday marks a new phase.  We had a baby before Eli.  But now we'll have a toddler.  It's really just a word, but even just typing it is like a sucker punch to me.  We never got toddler Logan, and as far as I know we never will.

I've often wondered what Logan will be like when we go to heaven.  Will he still be that tiny baby we held in our arms?  Will he be the age he would have been if he had lived?  Or is heaven on a different timeline altogether?  I have read "Heaven is for Real" (and I highly suggest it if you haven't read it) and from reading it, it seems that people do age in heaven but that people who die old aren't old in heaven.  So will we see Logan in all of the different stages of life?  Will we get to experience who he truly is when we get there?  I don't know the answer to these questions, but I do know that no matter what age he is or what he looks like we'll know him when we see him... it's a love thing.

So this weekend we'll be celebrating a year full of blessings, and we'll be grieving the moments we missed with Logan.  Until Logan, I didn't know those two emotions could be experienced at the same time, but I've learned so much since he was born.  It's all a part of this road we're travelling.

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I know that this post is kind of disjointed, and I've read over it several times trying to figure out how to fix that, but it is what it is... I guess I'm kind of disjointed myself :)