Now that we're all home, it's beginning to catch up with me.
Here is life as it will be.
It's been a little over a month.
It's happening just as I thought it might.
I'm doing the dishes at 4a.m.
And these little bursts of weeping come out of my face.
And I'm not even enjoying the release, because I'm too tired.
So it stops just as soon as it began.
What I'm saying is,
I feel like I got shot through a worm hole ten months ago.
Life is all about the stories you tell.
There's never just one story.
And lately, now that I'm no longer in the middle of getting through it, I'm seeing all these versions of my life.
Like little movies projected all over the walls of my apartment.
I don't know which one I'm living anymore.
I mean, I'm living all of them, but which one will I retell?

Today I watched the sky turn lavender and this is what I could hear:
Coffee percolating in the kitchen.
Folk music.
A restless baby.*

I sent Jesse to bed at 9p.m. Usually he takes the night shift and I get up at about 1a.m. to take over until 8ish.
But I got a nap in this morning. And so our brilliant plan to find some structure is foiled.
As I write this, Reese and Elliott are sleeping on a blanket in the middle of the living room floor. During the eight hours of the day that Jesse and I are both awake at the same time, the going's pretty easy. Sometimes when we both want a nap, we pick a baby and separate.
Easy.
But in these shifts when we're solo, it can get pretty hairy. We've found terms to use during our debriefings.
Like melt down.
As in,
"Did you have any melt downs?"
"Yeah. Two. But they didn't last very long."

Another main concern for us would be how many shirts went down in a blaze of projectile vomit, though you never have to ask.
Many a morning I come down stairs to find Jesse in some state of undress. Mostly he's shirtless, but on particularly active nights I've found him down to his undies.
I knew it would be hard.
I even knew it would be this hard.
But I guess the reality of it is... surreal.
Like when I look at Reese and Elliott sternly and say,
"You're just going to have to cry for one minute."
So that I can run upstairs to put a shirt on after hopelessly waiting them out for an hour.
As though I've somehow taken a stand by carving out 30 seconds to put a bra on.
But as I've found in my other life experiences, you adjust.
We appreciate the few moments we have to ourselves, and of course we take plenty of time to marvel at the fruits of our labor.
At the moment I'm playing Hey Jude and appreciating that I have both the energy and the ten minutes to share a little about this place in time.
And that's so restorative.
Also, sometimes when I'm feeding them I move my head from right to left.
I say,
"Where's momma?"
And be it Reese or Elli, I watch them turn their gaze to follow me.
That's so cool.