I'm working on it.

Seeing the interaction between girl one and girl two is a whole new kind of love. It's a whole new kind of good. A whole new kind of living. The emotions - unhidden, raw, full emotions - of brand new people, learning to know one another while still learning to know themselves are incredible, terrifying, and inspiring. There's no pretense, no holding back, no waiting to see how the friendship will turn out, no fear of expression. I see my heart there in the two of them, their father's eyes and need for activity, sometimes my own smile, and their own, unique personalities, thoughts, desires.

Maybe it's the holiday season. Maybe it's those nursing hormones. Maybe it's just how beautiful they are. I just feel full of them, full of this growing joy, full of a beauty and a hope and a love - for them, for their father, for our family.

Certainly they are not perfect. Certainly I am not either. Certainly, we as a family, fail, stumble, crash, fall. Certainly, surely, truly, this four is the hardest thing. There is little sleep, no time for so many of the things that seem like 'musts', very little adult conversation, and seconds only for individual solitude. Certainly there are days that seem to never end, nights that seem to never come, and moments of sheer desperation.

But we're doing it. We're doing it, every second, every minute, every day. We're getting there. All of us. Together.

And I love this. I love them. I love being a mother, being a wife, being this 'me' - this different person, this different me than I still don't know how to handle most days, this me that sometimes doesn't get a shower, that often wears the same clothes every other day, that cooks less and buys take out more, that writes seldom, that reads less than that, this me that forgot how eyeliner works, but this me that hears tiny, 'I love you, Mama'-s, that remembers all the words to fifty children's books, that knows how to make a sandwich into a star, that knows just how many different ways a ballerina-princess-fairy wears her hair, who can change a thousand diapers in less than a day and still manage to eat lunch while being simultaneously spit-up and pooped upon.

It's a new me. A new girl, a new life, a new everything. A change that started with two, and grew to three, and now grows into four. Four.

We four.

That's where I am right now, this instant, 4 weeks and after the birth of my second baby girl: I am in the swing.

I've passed the starting point, I think I can see the place I'd like to finish, and I'm moving (slowly-quickly-slowly) toward the end. But I'm definitely not there - not even close to breaking the line that marks the half-way point.

Life is good. And harder. And better. And more frightening than before. Just adding that one extra body, albeit a teeny-tiny one, to the mix has made such a huge difference to each second of waking consciousness.

I'm not sure where the balance point is from moment to moment, so things - sleep, dinner, showers, playtime, bedtime, breakfast, dressing, teeth-brushing, everything really - feel as though they are continually shifting.

The few constants are the 5:10 entry of my husband, the daily afternoon discussion about naptime with my three year old, the sure-to-wake-said-three-year-old-screams of my month old (which occur almost exactly to the second the elder daughter falls asleep) and the growing pain in my back and ribs that seems to get worse no matter what remedies I try.

Everything else is just hanging, moving, flowing, falling, jumping around somewhere in between the start and the finish.

Did I mention it's harder? Better? It is. Both. I'm trying to 'lean in to the chaos' ... a piece of advice that I think I'm beginning to get.

Here goes.

With my sweet three-year-old now at home, and our second daughter due soon, a work-from-home job and the regular day-to-day of life, it seems like finding that center of gravity is an impossible feat. How do I get the laundry done and the dishes and clean the bathroom and cut the lawn (*right, the weeds) and make dinner and balance the budget and read Dr. Seuss and paint and fight off helicopters and code and write and breastfeed and breathe?

That's the big question these days ... and is all of that the right thing to do after all? Is it the right outlook - should I be doing all of those things? Should I be dropping some of them? And what happens if we decide to add homeschooling ... which has secretly become a wish instead of just and idea ... ?

Everyone talks about balance. Well, maybe not everyone. But a lot of people seem to be all about balance - life is about finding the right balance - the balance that fits your life - that sweet spot on the see-saw that keeps you grounded and sane, right in the middle.

I'm not seeing it. I'm actually thinking it doesn't really exist - that it's just one of those things that the wanna-bes make up to make the rest of us feel bad.

My newest hypothesis (still in the testing phase) is that any balance we may have is momentary - and the place in the middle changes from day to day, sometimes even hour to hour. I don't think there's one perfect spot, or even one perfect stance, that lets us attack the many opportunities of life from a safe, protected space.

I'm testing out the idea that we have to be swift of foot and swift of mind, adapting second by second (in pre-school world) to the needs we have at a given time. Maybe it's more about moving in and out of many different patterns of action and less about getting the right amounts of this and that, the right number of minutes at each of our life stations.

Not sure how all of this theory will play out over the next months. I'm actually happy I just found a few minutes to think this out on the keyboard. And I'm wondering, for what must be the millionth time two things:

Why won't my daughter take a nap, and why do manufacturers insist on putting itchy tags in the side seams of maternity tops?