thank you, and good night

yesterday was our second bloggiversary, which seems like as good a point as any to bring this thing into the barn. i think we've had a good run, considering the average blog lasts six days.* i do appreciate the suggestion that what is published here is sometimes helpful to other people, but (1) this blog was first an outlet for our raw and immediate grief, and we're in a different place now, and (2) judging from the feedback we've gotten over the last two years, enough help has been distributed to allow us to walk away without any guilt.

*i have no idea what the average blog life is. i made it up. it just seems like it, okay?

so, tomorrow we leave for prague, and in a couple of weeks when we get back i'm starting a milo blog under this user name, which i'll launch when we're done tearing down this one; justin will probably be a co-contributor. and i'm going to start another, solo blog under a new user name - this blog will be the one in which i air my stained and dingy laundry. i plan for it to be a collection of well-thought-out and carefully edited essays, posted once or twice a week, with an occasional shocking revelation of my darkest self; in reality, it will probably mostly be my off-the-cuff thoughts hurriedly dashed off, with an occasional post on which i spent more than ten minutes.

i'm not going to restrict access to either blog, at least for now, but i request respectful handling if you decide to visit both blogs. if you wish to be notified of the launch and address of the milo blog or the navel-gazing blog, please e-mail me and tell me:

1. your name
2. your blog address
3. whether you want the milo, the navel, or the combo

please don't be offended if i ask you a few questions to determine who you are before i redirect you. and please don't make any anonymous requests.

thank you to everyone who has read, commented, encouraged us, and shared their blog back with us. we would not be here now without you.

most of all, thank you for acknowledging johannes - hans - our beloved firstborn. he's the reason we've written these two years. he deserves much more than this blog, and i like to think that some day his story will be told to an even broader audience. my face and neck are wet with tears as i think of him, of our plans for him to be a well-traveled and multi-lingual kid, of our gut-feeling that he would be a musician, of our visions of lazy saturday mornings spent playing with him in our bed. i miss his tentative kicks, his sweet calm, and all that he will never be. if i could, i would give him a thousand kisses right this very minute. god, i hope he had some perception, some inkling, of how much he was loved.