He wakes up looking for his mommy. Sometimes with a wail, sometimes with a whimper, sometimes with a cry so loud he sounds pained or scared or both. But always looking for his mommy.

I hear him over the baby monitor, and I go running, and I throw the door open with a “Mommy’s here!”, and I see his little head bobbing around in his bed, up and looking for his mommy.

Today he wasn’t bobbing. He was crying and trying to find the binky that had fallen out of his mouth. He was crying, and I picked him up, and I put his binky in, and he closed his eyes and went back to sleep for as long as I would hold him.

My sweet little boy. My bright-eyed Alec. The busy little person who wants to be held, who wants to be present, who wants to be in on the action.

He’s the reason life feels half-finished these days. At first, I rebelled against it. I just wanted to be able to get things done like I used to. To be able to drink my coffee while it was hot. To be able to wash the dishes without my water getting cold. I wanted to mop all the floors in one day. To make cookies more than once every few weeks. To sit down and write as much and as long as I wanted to. To not be always answering that little voice when it called. Because it called so often.

And it still does. But I don’t know . . .

A few months in . . . I’ll take half-finished. I’ll take lukewarm coffee. I’ll take short blog posts.

Because this is life now. My beautiful, extraordinary life. And I can’t quite imagine it anymore without him.