Just Like That

Just like that.

The pregnancy that began in the first weeks of the old year is over.
The maternity leave that gloriously covered the best of the holidays is over.
Evan's fourth trimester. Over.
I'm exhausted.
And I'm sad.

I feel underwhelmed by my life at the office and overwhelmed by my life everywhere else.
I am tired. So very tired. So tired I can't sleep anymore.
When one child goes to bed for the night with a lovely snugly hug, sweet "I love you" and doesn't wake up until morning, the other is just beginning a 12 hour stretch of peek-a-sleep.

When I go out in the morning to warm up the car and move it closer to the house before loading my most precious passengers, I wonder if there will ever be a day when I "accidentally" back all the way down the driveway and find myself at Starbucks with a latte.
Alone.
Audrey still watching a video on my phone and Evan snoozing in his car seat in the den.

I mean, I love these babies to the moon and back.
So much it hurts a little bit sometimes.
But it sure is exhausting.
But it's a nice kind of exhausting. A peaceful kind of tired.
This is how it's supposed to be.

And it goes so fast.
It's going so fast.
Audrey is wearing big-girl underwear and taking herself to the bathroom.
She doesn't want to sit in her highchair and she can reach the table without it.
She's memorizing books and burping her baby-doll ever so gently.
She doesn't want us to sing our goodnight song to her anymore.
And when I close the door after she says "night night" from the twin bed (the one I slept in until college) that surrounds her tiny body, I pause for a minute and fight off tears.
In my mind I hum the song and hold her little body, wrapped in her pink blanket.
So many times I wished she would just get a little bit bigger so that... and now she is.

Just like that.

And then I turn my attention, my body, my sleepless nights, my worry, over to my new baby.
And I savor every single minute, every cry, every sigh.
Every bit of baby-ness that I can eek out of him, I do.
Because in just a few days, weeks, months, years it's going to be over.
And I know now that I'm going to miss it when it is.

Just like that.