Tender Mercies

Bucket lists are funny because they often inspire you to do things you would have never thought to do otherwise. Drive 4.5 hours with a 12 month old to see a bunch of birds in the middle of nowhere America? 5 years ago I would have said, "ya right." But Sandhill Cranes bring a sense of nostalgia to us. It's as though we are connected to Fairbanks, Alaska in a very unique way.  When we lived in Fairbanks, our apartment complex was right in front of a migratory waterfowl refuge  and each year, thousands of Sandhill Cranes would come each summer. We learned during one of our trips to the crane festival that the birds stop on the Platte River in Nebraska on their journey north from Mexico/Texas. We thought, "hey, we should see them on the Platte in March if we ever live in the Midwest!"  And so this bird-watching trip was written on our bucket list and this year we headed north to see the migration. I think we were the youngest family among all the natu

Dearest Adelai, 365 days have now passed since your miraculous birth. It was a day that will forever be etched into my mind, with the memories of the painful exhaustion of childbirth becoming more and more fuzzy and somehow, being replaced by the beautiful memories of a newborn. The smell. The tiny body. The clean slate of a new life and endless possibilities. I kind of miss that.  But Grandpa Whipple says that "kids only get better." I would have to agree. You see, I made a collage of my top 8 favorite pictures of you from your first year and half of them are from the last two months. Yes. You only get better.  This first year has been the. most. exhausting. year. of. my. life. It has also been beautiful. When you were first born, I had no idea how to nurse or how to give a baby a bath, nor did I understand the magnitude of how fast a baby grows and develops in the first year of life. You started out as a baby who was completely de