It is all so beautiful, so challenging, so chaotic, yet so fulfilling. I remember these blurry-eyed days... days running into night into days again... Confused to the time and the day of the week and the season. It all runs together like an unending circle... only remembering it is morning by the beep of the coffeemaker and the sunlight streaming through the curtains. We live on caffeine, but it seems there is never enough.

And yet, the body can be physically exhausted and the heart can be so full. There are moments: Jack's sweet voice and sounds - his repeating of everything we say, singing to himself all day - Ford sleeping on my chest with the quiet rhythm of his breath, his safe and favorite place to snuggle. And I remember - This. Now, here, this. This is it. Not to live into a distant future of non-sleep-deprived days, but to be present here with my boys right now, in this season. It's challenging, tear-filled, frustrating, infuriating at times... but it fulfills a piece of my heart that couldn't have been filled any other way. The road to transformation is always initiated with challenge.

I recently read (then watched) Little Fires Everywhere, and I'm reminded of the brevity of this place in time. My children cuddled close, the vulnerability in their full weight pressed against mine, the absolute trust and admiration of a small child as he looks up at his Mom. The desire for affirmation and the need to be celebrated. The love and the nurture and the sweet exchange of toddler kisses so innocent. It won't always be like this. This time will pass and I will long for it like a distant nostalgic dream. To be here now is all I can do. To remember that spit-up and burping and crying every few hours at night and swaddling and cooing and pacifier-holding... it is all a phase that passes. What remains is the sweet little life that is growing up beside me, looking to me for guidance, and becoming more and more independent each day until eventually they won't need me anymore. Or at least in these ways.

“To a parent, your child wasn't just a person: your child was a place, a kind of Narnia, a vast eternal place where the present you were living and the past you remembered and the future you longed for all at the same time. You could see it every time you looked at her: layered in her face was the baby she'd been and the child she'd become and the adult she would grow up to be, and you saw them all simultaneously, like a 3-D image. It made your head spin. It was a place you could take refuge, if you knew how to get in. And each time you left it, each time your child passed out of your sight, you feared you might never be able to return to that place again.” - Celeste Ng