This is mine

I just spent 15 minutes nursing Liv on my left, and using my right arm to tickle Ada's back as she fell asleep. It was one of those moments where I looked down and saw a pair of tiny feet perched on a little back and framed by two toddler hands and thought, "This is my life?! This is my life. This is my life."

It's always a blur of disbelief and gratitude.

Ada and I spent time this afternoon watching her monthly videos. I spent time wiping tears, especially while watching the month before we left for Italy and seeing images of our first month there. It was another flash of, "This is my life?"

The past 2 years have been incredible in about a million ways.

So has the past month.

I've been continually impressed with how different a second child is. Maybe it's that I worry less, or have less time, or have less attention, or this baby is just requires different stuff of me, but I feel like I've only spent a fraction of the time tracing her profile and watching her sleep faces that I did with Ada. It's not that I love her any less, or find her any less incredible, but the newness of loving a being I created is not as new anymore. Not that it's old hat either. It just is. After I had Ada I remember feeling my heart change. And maybe it just needed one initiation into becoming a mother-heart; just one maturation before it was ready for children-plural, and not just child-one. Maybe it doesn't need to shed something else or grow another size to fit another tiny human inside. Maybe what I'm trying to say is that number two just feels more natural.

That's the craziest thing to me: I'm a mother of two. An exceptionally young mother of two. But I'm doing it. And I think I'm doing a pretty fine job.