So. It's now been 4 months and 24 days since we added one to our three. Life as four is good. It is a new kind of good. A kind of good I guess you don't know exists until you get there. Because three was good, too. And I really didn't think it could get better than the good we had at three. And yet, this new kind of good changes what I thought of the word before four existed.
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.
