Before or after?

Was it before Albie?

This is something I say so often, not in a big important way, just in a way of gauging when something happened.

When did we decorate the bedroom?

When did we stop going out for girlie diners at night?

When did we buy the car?

As I said not important stuff at all, the stuff isn’t the point. 

The point is that life is now defined by ‘before Albie’ and ‘after Albie’.

From the moment I got to lay eyes on that beautiful little baby gazing up at me with those magical eyes, already looking for milk at 2 minutes old. 

Thats the after that matters. The days after he came. All of them.

Sometimes time can seem so strange, a year can pass so fast with it always seeming to be Christmas or another birthday. 

Our year with Albie was of course too short, I wanted a life time. 

I wanted to see him do all the important things like take him shopping for his nursery school bag, wave him off when he’d go to a friends house for a sleepover, chose his subjects for high school, get a job he enjoyed, travel the world, maybe get married.

Maybe he wouldn’t have wanted to do those things, that wouldn’t matter…I just know it would have been wonderful to watch.

But it’s actually felt like we had Albie longer than a year, it feels like he’s been here a long while now. And I think thats because he has been.

He is in my mind every day, he is still the reason behind so many jobs on my to do list, he is embedded in our home and everyday family life so much even down to getting blamed if Milo gets a funny shape chip (Albies always playing tricks on us!), being the boys screen savers on their iphones, and basically determining our daily playlist with ‘Albie songs’. 

So yes my life is defined as ‘before Albie’ and ‘after Albie’. But not in a way of after he left…cause he never has, and never will. 

He changed everything because he came.

But my god I so wish I was shopping for that nursery school bag.