Still no baby here, though his family is certainly enjoying the alien moments created by his wiggles. He loves to give me crooked belly, and alien belly, and stick his foot out, etc. I can only be pregnant for so long before he gets here, so I am trying to be mellow about it all.

This weekend I was teasing Monkey by telling her that chocolate milk came from dark brown and light brown spotted cows from Wisconsin. She did not believe me and used the following phrase to create a majority over her father and I: “All of my stuffies and toys that have two eyes agree with me, so I win.”

What could we say against that? It was a fairly compelling argument.

Today I went to the outlet mall with Ellen and Tiff and spent an obscene amount of money on a new summer wardrobe for a certain tall beauty whose most recent growth spurt rendered her current clothing stockpile virtually useless. She was appreciative. Oddly, while she is hugely independent on everything else, she is fine with me picking out her clothes. I guess they simply don’t matter they much to her, or I have really good taste. I will go with the latter.

She and I both had a hard time with Nick’s death today, I spent the early morning hours awake again, pacing the house and trying to stop dreaming about him. No nightmares this time, just dreams of the time we spent together before he died. Sadly, they wake me up as much as the nightmares do, since even in my sleep I seem to realize something is wrong and that realization pulls me from rest. I am becoming very friendly with the hours between 2 and 5 am.

Monkey spent the last half hour of her school day in tears, crying about how much she misses him. Unfortunately, she had a substitute, and she really didn’t know what to do. I explained the situation again when I got to school and then made hot cocoa when we got home and we snuggled a little. Still, it is hard to explain this to her, because at 31 I don’t know when I will begin to feel normal again, so how can I set expectations for my 5 year old?

I still feel like some kind of friendship amputee, I can still feel my friend, I can hear him, and I keep waiting for him to call me. He is never far from my thoughts, and it is very hard to get through a whole day without crying, or really wanting to, at least once. I haven’t slept well in days. So how do I explain to Monkey that missing him is okay, feeling sad is okay, but being happy and forgetting about him is okay too? That she shouldn’t be completely morose about his death? She doesn’t have to remember him all the time in order to mourn him?

Hard conversations at our house lately. Tonight she asked if Nick was a ghost, I told her I didn’t know. She said “I hope he is, because I really want to see him again.” I suggested she talk to him, and told her some people believe people can hear us after they have passed away. She is currently in her room talking away, shedding some tears and hopefully learning how to cope. She is too small and too young to have to cope with this. He was a wonderful friend to her, I wish she had not lost him so early. Really big feelings are very scary and hard to deal with when one is so small.

Of course, this is hard to deal with even when one is big, so I can only try my best to answer her questions honestly, and be open to talking about him. That is the hardest part, whenever I seem to be having a day when he is not constantly on my mind, she brings him up, and there I am again, feeling like I could almost touch him, or hear him, and having to remember he is gone.