….and i didn’t ever have time to do anything again.

this is the first day i have actually sat down in front of my computer in about a week. a whole week. before having the baby i barely moved away from it….couldn’t live WITHOUT it. these days, correspondence is via iPhone or iPad or telepathic or even hand written letter, all from the couch or the bed, or the kitchen…baby swaddled in the crook of my arm, controlling the iPad from the counter, phone up to one ear, pacifier in MY mouth because it keeps falling out of his mouth and onto the floor.

i think back to the transition from 1 child to 2. that was tough. that was…insanity.

going from 2 children to 3 is…easier. you are already crazy, you have accepted the crazy, you may have embraced it even. sure, it frustrates you that it has taken 3 days to fold one basket of clothing, or that the beds haven’t been made for 2 weeks, or that the emails are piling up in your inbox and you know that the only time you have to respond is between the 3 and 5am breast feeding session…but you move on, oblivious to the fact that you may or may not have changed your shirt for the past 48 hours, or when the last time you even got a chance to go to the bathroom.

William is a snuggle bug. i love that. he smiles…all the time. he laughs when he pees on me (obviously this is VERY funny to him…not so much to me). he is a grunter but not really a crier unless he is REALLY hungry or really wet…is rarely quiet even when he sleeps. he dreams big. i stare it him for hours, hoping not to miss a moment of his newness. he is strong, and beautiful and perfect and life affirming. (i am pretty sleep deprived so maybe this is the haze of exhaustion taking over), but i am truly the happiest i have ever been…

ever…

in my whole life.

dear Mikki and Katie…

i am ever so close to having your baby brother (i hope it happens today, after i wash the kitchen floor). ever since i found out i was having a boy, a lot of people have had a variety of comments…all well meaning…

…finally, a boy!

…it’s about time!

…now you can be done, huh?!

…they pee up in the air, you know.

…you must be SO happy now that you are having a boy.

…it must be nice to buy blue for a change?!

like i said, all well meaning and harmless comments. most of the time i say, yes, or yup, or smile.

tuesday i was in the doctors office and admiring the fresh baby girl being passed around by all of the nurses in the office. the first time dad was beaming with an other-worldly glow that i believe is only possible after truly and completely loving something more than yourself, and a serious lack of sleep.

“what are you having?” he asked.

“a boy, but i have 2 girls, so i know what this is like too.” i said, not taking my eyes off his little pink bundle of perfection.

“ahhh…finally, huh?”

instead of my usual comment wrapped in social acceptance….”my girls are the most amazing people i know. completely. it would have been a blessing to have another, really.”

he nodded with a smile, and i knew as he passed his seemingly mammoth hand over his little girl’s full head of ebony hair that he knew exactly what i meant.

i think, if i had to sum up being a mom to a girl so far, i would say it is like looking into one of those squiggly, distortion mirrors at the circus while ice skating. a crooked reflection of your own childhood melting with your own insecurities, your own expectations, and your own twisted fairy tales…sugar coated with humor and those snapshot moments where you sound exactly like your mother (which you said you never would).

9 years ago (yes, 9 years, almost to the day), i gave birth to a little girl who i only WISH i was…with a soul i only wish i had. (not an exaggeration, Mikayla…ask anyone). i had a lot of crazy ideals about motherhood before i was actually a mother (isn’t that always the way)…but as it turns out, it’s better. it’s better than anything i had imagined it would be. and when i did it 3.5 years later, it only got more exciting and our family is now like that lumpy can of multicolored, accidentally synthesized Play-dough on the shelf in your room.

now, don’t get me wrong, i expect only similar brilliance from your brother. but i know in my heart too, that being a mom to you two will always transcend into different realms. and, yes, there will be plenty of times when we all want to pull our hair out, plenty of failures on my part, plenty of shortfalls. i’m not naive to the wicked blessings of adolescent years. i was, after all, a teenager once.

but in the space between, there is and always will be, love.

all my love darlings,

p.s.

Would you look at her
She looks at me
She’s got me thinking about her constantly
But she don’t know how I feel
And as she carries on without a doubt
I wonder if she’s figured out
I’m crazy for this girl

evan.and.jaron “crazy for this girl”

p.p.s. shopping for a boy, or ‘blue’, has been completely unsatisfying. girls get to wear so many more cool things!

to be a star,
you must shine your own light,
follow your own path
and dream your own dreams
fight the fear and darkness,
for that is when the stars shine their brightest.

{terry.pratchett}

February will be our last month as “us”. “us” meaning just the 2 of you, meaning ‘just us girls’, meaning the tight family of 4 that we have been for almost 6 years. it is the last month of uninterrupted nights, the last month where we don’t have to worry about 2-4 hour feeding schedules and nap times, and diaper changes. in March, we will become a family of 5. this unexpected, unplanned addition of your little brother will make our house seem smaller, our car  too cramped, our lives more hectic, our sleep less slept, our laundry pile significantly larger (how can that even be??), and our hearts….infinitely bigger.

i worry as a mom. i worry that our little pact of ‘the Burse Girls Club’ might disconnect some…after all, we have all done a lot of growing up together over the last (gulp) 9 years. hard to say who has grown up more….i think it might be me. i told myself from the beginning of my pregnancy that we (or i) would be ready for him when he came, but i must have been fooling myself. have i learned nothing as a mother?  you are never really ready for anything as a parent.

you just fake it with love and hope you won’t need to call in mental health reinforcements, or an ambulance in the end.

i wasn’t ready for 2, but after a year of ‘adjustment’ (adjustment = failing miserably, falling flat on my face more than i care to admit even to myself, and giving up on sanity in general) i felt more fortunate every day to have the two most loving little girls. you guys have made me appear to others like i knew what i was doing with this whole parenting thing. when…..i don’t. at all.not even a little.

i just got lucky.

so, with all this worry, i decided to take on a project for a month to capture “us” as we are now. just the every day stuff mostly…’come as you are’ style. because i know “us” will change with William’s arrival.

for the better. for the crazier. but it will change.

love always my darlings,

be silly, be kind, be honest….emerson.

dear Mikki and Katie….

there are few things in this world that make me more proud than setting up our Christmas tree. and, although i am sure it should, it has nothing to do with religion. after 10 years of growing our family, this tree is a patchwork of our first times, our last times, our happiness and triumphs, our expansion of selves, our history as people separate and together. every ornament holds a memory as fresh as yesterday’s frost on the car window.

the star i bought at Rebecca’s in downtown Bangor the year Daddy and i had our first tree together…i was pregnant with you, Mikki. i say it every year, but that tree really was the most beautiful tree we have ever had. it was still fairly early on in our relationship, so Daddy let me buy the biggest tree on the lot. all the more pointed, the tree lot was right next to the hotel (umm…not a fancy hotel, or even a ‘nice’ hotel either) where we had lived less than a year ago. our two and a half bedroom apartment might as well have been a palace. the tree was so big it had to come up through the back steps…not an easy job. your dad just smiled and shook his head, never saying a word. but, that was the last time i got away with anything like that.

i love looking through all of the handmade ornaments that you two have created. messy marker and paint and barely distinguishable clay figures. glitter that still freckles off when coming out of the storage box every year and the sheer of Elmer’s glue is all that remains….they are perfection. it makes me sad to think of anyone who has no such mementos to hang off of their tree. they buy their fancy ornaments that look all the same, and adorn their tree with ribbons, and that is nice enough i guess. no matter how full they are they always seem empty, and a bit lonely, to me.

we moved into our house 2 days before Christmas in the middle of a snow storm, and i bought the DREAM ornament the day after when i got our tree. it was one of the last ones on the lot. even now that its been three years, it still seems like a dream that we live here. we never thought we would be able to afford our own home.

i have a lot from my own childhood as my parents have shuffled things out to make room for new memories they are making for themselves. i always look at those like my tree building foundation. i have some that i made myself, with my beloved babysitter Joyce when i was your age….all dated with a Sharpie marker. i can almost smell the homemade play-dough cooking on her stove through them. there are the ones that your Mema and i made the first Christmas we were on our own after the divorce and we couldn’t afford to buy ornaments for our tree….out of LEGS pantyhose eggs and glued fabric. Mema painted sand dollars collected from the beach the summer before and we strung ribbon from them. we made garland out of popcorn and cranberries. i don’t even remember if we had lights that year, but still, it was beautiful.

i hardly think our tree will ever make the cover of Better Homes and Gardens. but maybe it, and all the other trees out there like it, should.

all my love darlings,

we have this thing every morning. it’s 10 minutes before we leave for school. no matter how ready we are to leave, we are never ready. no matter how calm the morning has been….it suddenly…isn’t anymore. if every lunch is packed, and every shoe is carefully laid out, and every sock (mismatched of course) is on, and every last paper signed, and every tooth polished and hair brushed….in those last moments, we disintegrate into a gurgling puddle of helplessness. i think to myself every day, tomorrow, tomorrow we will try again and it will be more calm….we will whisk out the door with our unzipped coats floating gently behind us in our self created breeze, and the house with go on humming its own quiet tune of peacefulness after the doorknob is released and we are down the driveway.

this never happens.

the shoelaces won’t lace, the picture is not finished (and for the love of all that is child created art, it must be complete before a day of pre-kindergarten or you loose all inspiration), the juicebox isn’t cold (or doesn’t have a straw), the face isn’t washed, that math homework (what math homework? i didn’t know you had math homework…) isn’t done, the permission slip to go to this place or that place or no place really, isn’t signed, the lunch money isn’t evenly distributed, the cat needs more kisses, the car is a rocket-ship (“no Mikayla, it isn’t a rocket ship, its a spaceship”….”Katie, that is the same thing”….”Ummmm, no. actually, i don’t know. i just don’t like that word for it then.”) and until this is settled, and we all decide to get along, the car/rocket-ship/space-ship is not going anywhere….

and then it passes, as if that 10 minute, faucet-leaked time, poured out.

and we are at the front of the school, and we are getting out of the car (or whatever it is), and we are saying good-bye for the day. we hug, we tell each other how much love we have for one another (THIS MUCH….Katie says, arms stretched out, from the sidewalk across the road, her puffy winter jacket hiding most of her body, except for her chubby little knees), and some special order for dinner comes from Mikayla (something-something and with meatballs or pizza), and we are blowing kisses and i am watching you both walk away from me, hand-in-hand (mitten-in-mitten) into the school.

and when i get home, the house is humming its tune of peacefulness, and the cat is still looking for more kisses, and it looks like a bomb went off in the living room, and i am wishing it was 10 minutes ago and we were all still back here to do it again.

daily mantra: the world needs DREAMERS, and the world needs DOERS, but most of all, the world needs DREAMERS that DO.