The Quilt

It is still so heartbreaking to open up this page and not have an update to give you on Ryder.  Even when it wasn't necessarily all good news, it was news nonetheless.  He was here, he was active, dynamic, and always amazing...and even when the now wasn't perfect, it was hopeful.  And all those not-so-perfect moments - those were all OUR moments.  They were our gifts.  So we will just start there - the update.  Our little warrior would be 18 months old at the end of this month.  I of course can't be sure of anything, but I do believe that he is toddling around, laughing and playing, just not down here with us.  I think about what he is doing all the time, but I also take him with me everywhere I go.  He was at the zoo today.  I didn't see the yellow butterfly again - today only an orange one, but I could picture him perfectly running away from me giggling while we were trying to get on the tram and could almost feel him squirming in my lap trying to get free... 

Addy, now she just won't stop getting bigger.  She is playing soccer this summer and starts back to pre-K and dance class at the end of the month.  She is full of surprises, songs and is just a spark of pure joy.  I hope she never loses the mindset that the world is full of 2 kinds of people, her friends, and those she has not met yet, who represent future friends.

If you were wondering if I have seen any yellow butterflies fluttering about...absolutely yes, but not often, and never if I am searching to find one.  The butterfly house in St. Louis for example - not a single yellow butterfly.  But the afternoon before mother's day on my deck he did come to visit...

Most importantly for tonight, the quilt.

The day we brought our Ryder to the Park with all the Flowers, I gave a bag of treasures - Ryder's clothes, to my friend Jill...who delivered them to a group of amazing ladies, the Scott County Homemaker's Extension Association Quilter's Unit...who had volunteered to turn these tangible bits of my sweet boy into a quilt.  They worked countless hours on this project and the attention to detail is truly incredible - carefully moving small embroidered animals from pajamas to the center of  small square of coordinating fabric and re-stitching them, folding and pressing the tiniest of the onsies and adhering them to their own squares to fit aside the bigger clothes, incorporating bits of every little outfit I sent.  The final product is beautiful, painfully beautiful in fact.  It is perfect, and while I'd like to promise these ladies I will protect their work of art properly hung up, displayed or packaged, I am afraid that I won't be able to stop myself from loving it until the edges are frayed. 

I don't know how to say thank you enough to Jill and this wonderful group of ladies.  I am trying so hard not to cry on this lovely quilt and am failing miserably.  And if this gift isn't touching enough, the second bag...the bag with every tiny remaining remnant of cloth saved for me, not even one thread or snap thrown out...and folded into the bottom of that bag...dated printouts from this very blog that they searched out and read to know the significance of the yellow butterfly that they then carefully stitched to the quilt's back corner....