9.29

I am itching to write, to capture moments, and I have to surrender: while I started this as a loss blog four years ago (almost), now my joys outnumber my losses four to one, and thus it only makes sense that perhaps my posts should begin to reflect this.

I am overwhelmed with happiness right now. I absolutely love having four children; I love so many things about it I can hardly begin to wrap my head around expressing what makes it so wonderful. I feel so lucky that I was physically able to pull of this feat of having four living children in my house, but I also feel lucky that I was emotionally and mentally able to open myself up to the chaos that this big family entails*. I feel, somehow, that being "busier" has liberated me somehow, and opened me to just really embracing how amazing it is to have these four people to live with, and to raise, and mostly to enjoy. I absolutely love their company, each and every one of them. I love taking care of them and watching them grow and I'm just so giddy and thrilled that I get to love FOUR of these little walking, talking people (or maybe not quite walking and talking yet....) which is four times as many people for me to love.

I am almost operating on a new theory, which is that suddenly now that there is barely time for me to do anything other than take care of them, I'm forced to just embrace that as the joy in my life as opposed to trying to find other things that are my own, personal things that I crave to do. I also have this sudden, alarming context to it all: (and could this be the result of having the second child enrolled in full-day school?) which is, that childhood lasts for such a brief flicker, and if I don't pay attention, it will be gone, and forever. I have so many years of my life to do other things, but only now to do this. It is not work to take care of them, it is my privilege. (oh, okay. So it is work, a lot of work, but that work is my privilege) And it makes me so happy.

Last night the rain was blowing in. The river was riding high, sounding like a fan on high speed as it rushed over the huge boulders outside my bedroom window. A cool breeze blew in the windows as I climbed into bed onto smooth bedsheets and lifted baby Maeve, who had been sleeping on the bed, into my arms to nurse her before I went to sleep myself. She was swaddled in her turquoise blue flannel blanket with wavy coloured stitching around the border, and her little fuzzy head stuck out the top. I latched her on and grabbed my book and suddenly became aware of her feet, which had come out of the bottom of her wrap and were now settled on my thigh as she nursed. The soles of them were flat to my skin, and as the wind blew across our bed they radiated warmth into my body. It felt so, so warm, so beautifully warm on my leg, and it was in such sharp contrast to the night air that surrounded us. As I laid down to sleep, I inched her carefully down by my side and tucked up my legs around her so that her feet stayed there, warm on me, as we fell asleep together.

I love this.

* Yes, there is a financial piece: I suppose that if Greg and I, who ourselves could barely send our children to nursery school, didn't come from families who can and will help us to conquer whatever pieces of university we can't get paid for elsewhere, we might have had to reel it in a little earlier. I just have to state that because obviously kids cost money; I will also say that we do sacrifice somewhat in order to have a big family: i do not buy myself a juice if I'm thirsty, and we don't get take out food or go to restaurants on any sort of regular basis or buy new things for fun. We share bedrooms and get our toys at our town dump's swap shop and we have a great time doing it!