I'm working on it.

It's not part of my natural state to wish to stay up for days without sleep, or wear someone else's stomach acid on my shoulders, or wash huge swaths poop out of teeny, tiny clothing. It's not part of my natural state to go for weeks and weeks with no solitary moments - no moments alone, not even a shower or a trip to the loo. It's not part of my natural state to remain calm when the floor I've just picked up for the eighth time is suddenly littered with cheerios or spilled fruit or toys or tiny clothes. It's not part of my natural state to give up nearly everything I want for people too small to know, understand or care. It's not part of my natural state to control my selfish desires and my short temper. It's not part of my natural state to persevere, to endure, to press on, when 'me' is the last person to get a break that lasts fifteen minutes, if that.

Sometimes I don't want to do it. Sometimes I just don't want to. Sometimes I don't want to hear my name five hundred times in a row. Sometimes I just want it to be quiet. Sometimes I just want it to be still and soft and isolated.

There is never a moment when I don't love my kids. Even in those moments of longing for alone-ness, I still love them, and I am still filled with joy at the thought of their sweet smiles, soft skin, and shining eyes.

But you see, it's the 'them' that I love. It's easy to love them. That comes naturally. The hard part comes in the 'service'. Learning to love the service part is the part that doesn't come naturally. And let me just say, from my perspective (which isn't much better than cloudy, so don't take it to the bank or anything), learning to love being a servant, learning to be a good mother, is h-a-r-d, hard.

Some days I do a pretty good job. Some days I don't. I do my best and try to remind my mind that I am an imperfect parent raising imperfect children. But in the middle of the job, it's easy to lose sight of the times I do it well. It's easy to only see the times I lose my temper or don't get the dishes done or keep them up way too late or skip reading a book because I just don't feel like reading about big bird one more time. And it's easy to get stuck in a state of disappointment with the me that is mama.

Today was one of those days. Until right around lunch. When the sweetness that is my three-for-only-three-more-days little girl asked me why I was looking down at the ground.

And with that, she went back to messing around with her horses and her pasta salad.

I just sat there wiping away the water that kept springing up in my eyes.

"Not to be served, but to serve". Love is an action, after all. Press On.

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.