25 June 2020

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

02 June 2020

Our first night home, I buried him close in my arms for three hours that night - something I never would’ve done with Jack. I smelled his baby hair and clasped each of his baby fingers. The tiny pit pat rhythm of his breath on my skin awakening my consciousness to the reality of this life I held. Completely surrendered, his heartbeat against mine. I now have the perspective I didn’t have with Jack — it goes so fast. Everyone tells you that, and they're right. Even in the challenge, this isn’t forever. Everything is a phase and everything passes. The seemingly long sleepless nights and the crying and the frustrating nap protests... they all pass. What I have here is a newborn, who will grow into a toddler, who will continue to grow into a little boy, who will become a man. In only a few short months, holding him all night won’t be possible. So here I am, bleary-eyed, tired, straining to make it to morning, but with a heart so full of gratitude it brings me to tears. I will forever remember these nights; him and me, snuggled close, and that full beautiful trust of a baby with his Momma. 

"I'm always here for you," I whisper. And I mean it. I always will.

Lately.