Days Like Today

All we did of note today was go to church, take a nap, and clean house.

But it was so nice.

The kids... ah, the kids.

What humbles me and amazes me and thrills me most about being a mother is how little I have to do with my children's existence. It is as if they dropped from the sky, and finding out all the strange and marvelous things about them as they grow into people is so frickin' amazing.

Some people have children to take care of them in their old age. Some for their own immortality. Some to save a relationship.

Those reasons seem... MAJORLY flawed to me.

I don't even know why I wanted to have kids; I just did, there wasn't anything all that defined about it. It wasn't an experience I was willing to die without, and I am pretty good at taking note at those must-do calls and heeding them. K's the same way, so we had us some babies.

My favorite thing about being Annaliese and Caspian's Mommy (as I am increasingly known) is not the Eskimo kisses and how Annaliese asks me to sing her songs every night in the rocking chair, little arms wrapped around my neck and hair against my cheek. It's not the body-shaking smile that breaks across Caspian's face every time I walk in a room or he wakes from a nap.

It's the mere fact of them. That Annaliese and Caspian are HERE. I am so very glad my children are in the world. And it is increasingly satisfying to watch them grow up. I never, ever would have thought that an eight-month-old and a toddler could be entire entities in themselves, souls and all, but they are.

Motherhood has taught me two things simultaneously: one, that no one can do it for me (this became very apparent during labor, actually; a transition that I've found key, and a major reason I'm glad I went drugs/operation-free); and two, that it's not all about me. Motherhood has made me more confident in my decisions and more comfortable balancing the needs of others along with my own.

But that's not why I'm the most glad. (Neither is watching K. as a father, though he is an absolutely brilliant one and the amount that my heart cracks open watching him with our children is often actually painful.)

It's that they are here. Two little people the world never knew it needed.