do not pass go

a quick post from an outpost - i'm using the computer at one of our favorite neighborhood coffee joints, and time is limited, plus i already used up 40 minutes just reading and replying to my email, so i continue to get further behind on news of my fellow bloggers, but we hope to have our computer back soon (it's being examined, perhaps even as i write) and then to have the leisure to keep up with events in bloglandia. milo is great (and i'll update his picture page as soon as we get our computer back), and the half boobie/half bottle routine is working pretty well. he's more expressive every day - we get upturned mouth corners that are almost smiles when he's alert and outright grins and giggles when he's asleep - and if he were one iota cuter, i would explode from it.

but more and more, i'm thinking of hans. the specter of him haunted my weekend in florida, when i spent more one-on-one with hans's cousin-twin, my nephew, who is the same age hans would be. while it was completely enchanting to watch him warm up to milo, and push his soothie pacificer back in milo's mouth for him when it started to dangle, and bring him age-inappropriate toys for his amusement, it also hammered home how hans might be interacting with milo now, and how there was a big gaping hole in my mom's living room floor where he should have been, fighting with his cousin for possession of the playskool donut stacker thingy.

for the first time in months, i find myself having flashbacks of the horrible moment when hans's death was confirmed, and of the weeks afterward when we holed up in hotel rooms and friends' guestrooms, trying to get numb. milo is so magical that he highlights the magic we missed with hans. i know this conundrum is an old one, and too common - would milo be with us now if hans had lived. the honest answer is almost certainly not, and i cannot imagine dealing with milo (who slept four hours in one stretch last night, for the first time ever, to which i say, hallelujah!) and a toddler at the same time without losing the last fringes of my sanity, and a world without milo is unimaginable - too horrible a thought to even contemplate. but i do miss hans, and i grieve anew for us and all we lost along with hans.

time is up, even though i have more about which i want to write, like that i chickened out of outright sterilization in favor of the mirena, but it will have to wait. our laptop cannot be repaired and back in my arms soon enough...