The past five and a half weeks have been in turns painfully slow and incredibly fast. They've been amazing. Tiring. Sweet. Frustrating. Joyful.
Tegan is, just as we imagined, the final piece in the puzzle of our family. She just FITS. We never thought we'd have a girl, and certainly hadn't planned from the start to have four children. I thank God that He put it on my heart to have another, because of course now I couldn't imagine our lives without her! I'm looking at her both in awe and with a strange, matter-of-fact sense of peace. It's a feeling of "Oh, so *you're* the one that's been missing all this time."
The boys are all both doting on her and adjusting in their own ways. Everett adores being a big brother, and loves showering Tegan with constant hugs, kisses, and general in-her-face affection. He's been extra affectionate with me and Mike as well, and frequently needing reassurance of his place in the family. Paxton surprised me by not only being completely smitten with his new sister, but also finding huge amounts of joy in picking out her clothes. Where Everett seems to be clinging to us more tightly, Paxton is doing the opposite. While not exactly pulling away, he's been spending more time on his own, and playing independently on the computer more often. I'm finding if I don't really seek him out a little bit, we often don't truly connect until the end of the day. As for Spencer... like the others, he just adores the baby. It's been hard to figure out what he needs from us though, as each day has been markedly different from the one before it. We're just trying to navigate the ups and downs as they come.
And Mike and I, well, we're fast becoming reaquainted with the world of gummy smiles; sweet newborn noises; and warm, sleepy, bundles of pure squish..... as well as sleepless nights; spit-up on shoulders; eating dinner in shifts; and wrestling noodle-like limbs into tiny onesies. And since the earth doesn't stop turning just because you have a baby, we're also keeping running with appointments and work and Cub Scouts and LIFE (which at the moment includes the pain, stress, and frustration of my ongoing gall bladder issues; and the accompanying HMO scheduling snafus) Still, I look at these faces and it's all beyond worth it. It's a good day to be a mom.
