So here we are.

photo credit: Emily Snitzer

So here we are. The last day of being this little family of three. I've been counting down until tomorrow for what seems like a year...and I guess it almost has been. But like I've said before, it's strange to be in a place you've imagined so many times. I felt this way when I graduated from college, and again from grad school. I remember sitting up there in the bleachers, at that very point in my life I'd worked to get to, imagined being at so many times, and then...just being there. It's a little weird, a lot exciting, and totally surreal.

These past almost three years have been so, so wonderful. I think of them like I think of the first years of Hank and me. We can't ever relive them, we can't ever get them back, and they are beyond special in not only their reminiscent qualities but in their simplicity. I think back to sleeping on a tiny twin bed in a closet-sized room, surrounded by hand me downs and things leftover from college days. There's beauty in that. That was almost 10 years ago, and looking back at those days, those nights when the heater in that old, old building would be out, when we just made enough to cover rent and bills, when we would sleep in until noon and stay up until 3...that was the beginning. At the time it didn't seem like "just starting out," but as you move through life and away from those first days and months and years, things last and you realize the life you've been waiting for is already happening- the beginning is what those times become.

And so I think back to those first days of Henry, that little newborn with the wrinkly skin, so tiny we weren't sure how to even hold him. Those powder-scented diapers, the miniature socks and hats and onesies. I remember those first nights feeling kind of lost, not knowing how I could even survive the next day on an hour of sleep. But I did. We did. And so those days and nights, the first days of being a family of three, they all faded into the next days, until suddenly here we are. Almost three years later, and one day away from welcoming in our second son.

The beauty of it all is that we never really know how things are going to turn out, or what life has in store for us. We don't always realize that the beginning of something great is happening until we're able to look back at it and see that yes, that was the first part of it all. And that's kind of how I feel now. I'm right in the center of our now, so many pieces of our story coming together to form this very time in our life, I'm able to look back at so many beginnings with this little family of mine, and I'm able to see a new one starting in just one day.

Here we are, here we go...