i sit here listening to the blowing autumn wind, grateful for the extra white noise to help sleeping babies rest and feeling relieved that tomorrow is saturday.
do you ever feel relieved it's the weekend and then wonder why, since it really changes very little when your life is a cycle of staying at home with little ones?
the last time i wrote here vivi was a newborn. i wrote about how the newborn phase is hard, and how it is okay not to enjoy it.
i look back on vivi as the world's best newborn. at 2 months she was practically sleeping through the night in a small antique bassinet pushed next to our dresser with us tossing and turning in the bed next to her. i had no idea how good i had it in the sleep department with that baby. now she's three; spunky and curious and so full of life she's bursting at the seams with laughs, cries, squeals and screams.
the last time i wrote here teddy was a chubby toddler, two years old and exploding with vocabulary. transitioning from one child to two was just about as seamless as i could've asked for, because he hardly acknowledged vivi until she started crawling. he gave me space so graciously even though my attention to him was depleted. he never complained or whined about the baby. it was as though she'd always been there; she was just more there than before.
teddy's first love was planes, then cars; the small matchbox ones that little boys somehow cannot collect enough of. everyone knew he loved cars and would give them to him regularly. the last time i wrote here, he kept one in each hand at all times unless he was eating or sleeping. i remember he hated going to his little nursery class in church unless he had a car in each hand (in which case it was only barely tolerable). i remember every night after vivi had gone down for bedtime we'd sit on our big bed for over an hour working our way through those little board books. we'd get through 30 or 40 of them in one evening and then he'd pass out happily in his bed covered with firetruck sheets. i'd never met a little boy who could devour books like him, and still haven't met a boy i find so endlessly charming and lovable.
the last time i wrote here i was a mother to a two year old, and a newborn. tonight i type exhaustedly as a mother to a six year old, a three year old, and a baby who just finished her first year. the last time i wrote here the thought of a worldwide pandemic felt unimaginable; fictional even. now we keep masks and hand sanitizer in the car and extra pairs in the diaper bags.
i tried writing in a different space for a few years, and ultimately resented feeling like i needed to write about something since i was paying for the website. it felt good and a little sad to let it go.
but now i'm back. here, where i started. feeling like i'd like a space to remember our days by; a place to write love notes to my children and my life. a place to feel things, good and bad.
back where it started.
