One Month In

The thoughts that are going through my mind right now, I remember having with Carter as well. The first month of his life is gone, and I have no idea where it went. If time with your first child flies like the wind, time with your second child goes by at lightning speed, I have no idea how to describe how fast time with your third goes. The first couple weeks Sawyer was alive, I made sure to cherish the moments. I held him often while he slept. Layed with him on my chest on the couch. Made sure to go over his little eyebrows with my thumb while I fed him, play with his teeny feet, try to memorize every part of him. He may be my last. That’s something we will never know as parents. When God will tell our hearts or our bodies that we are done bearing children. It’s a hard concept, but I guess the only way to tackle it is to try to remain joyful with our new blessing and to keep our spirits alive and thankful, even in the hard times. With that knowledge hidden in my heart, I silently cried two nights ago when I had to start putting away some of the newborn sleepers that no longer fit Sawyer. He’s not allowed to grow. But oh, how I want him to grow. So torn. So torn.

I do have to admit that there are things I’m struggling with in all this newness and distraction. The biggest is that I feel like I missed the whole summer. The beginning of summer was filled with agony–I was so big and pregnant and terribly miserable. I slept a lot. I spent very little time with Brayden and Carter. I cried on my birthday because I hardly slept the night before, and we couldn’t do anything to celebrate. I threw myself an internal pity party. And then four days later, our lives changed and here we are, with the beginning of September upon us, and I have no idea where our summer vacation went. I still have spent very little time with Brayden and Carter. We didn’t have as many people over for cookouts and swimming and bonfires as we would’ve liked to. I wanted to have a drive in movie night in our front lawn with our movie projector. James wanted to have a big kickball game with all our friends. We wanted to work on reading with Brayden, and writing and staying active to get him a little more fit. I wanted to work on some things with Carter–he still doesn’t know how to hold a pencil or write any letters, or use scissors. We had big plans, as we always seem to do.

But alas, we are in survival mode. And more than once in the past week we’ve talked about how we feel like we are in two separate worlds. Me, in Sawyer’s because that’s how it has to be. And James in Brayden and Carter’s, because that’s the only option left when we divide and conquer. There’s not only kids either. There’s load upon load of laundry. There’s a lawn that needs to be mowed. Bills and paperwork to take care of. Dishes and meals and the list always goes on and on. I feed and take care of Sawyer, swaddle him every nap time and silently plead for a long nap, which I know won’t happen. I get my second wind and begin attacking the housework, the client emails that have started again, the laundry pile, the messy kitchen–and thirty minutes later, nap time ends and the upstairs downstairs shuffle of hushing, pacifier replacing, and pleading with God for the wee one to fall back asleep again begins.

And while this stage is terribly hard (as with all stages it seems–for once one ends, another begins), I have to remind myself of how incredibly lucky we have been that both of us have been home since his birth. We need to remind ourselves that this is temporary, and that things get easier, but that we need to try to still enjoy where we are at, because this will be the only now. What a hard, fine line to try to dance along. I’m sure many of you have been there. And I know some of you are there right now.