been thinking...

Dear Juniper Jean and Ulysses Verne,

In your seventh month you stole command for yourself in such a vibrant forceful way, I was left a step or two behind, marveling. Constantly. This month, you went from being technically able to roll (doing it with a slow windup, rocking back and forth and then over to our applause!) to being able to throw yourself side to side with decisive gusto. Popping up on arms like seals or otters, momentarily, before flinging yourself back over. Heads were bonked on hard floors and siblings were rolled over. Tears were shed, pride was gained. This was great progress, babes!

Speaking of progress, more than ever before, you are aware of each other. Sometimes I'll find you just staring at each other, laughing, and it is indescribably wonderful to watch you connect in this emotional fort that I can only observe from a distance. It isn't always concurrent, often it's you Uly finally noticing that your sister exists and just cracking up at the site of her, for some reason. Juniper, you continue your love affair with your brother, always chasing him around the foam floor tiles, frantically grasping your hand toward him like you're trying to catch fruit flies. Your favorite thing -- getting a handful of his face or hair -- is coincidentally his LEAST favorite thing on earth. Ulysses, you have no tolerance for Juniper's ongoing delight in touching you. Her petting your hair for the merest second flares your legendary impatience (a genetic gift from momma) into a howl. June bug, meanwhile, remains undeterred.

Ironically, Ul man, you deeply enjoy working your little fingers under Junie's helmet and yanking it to you, oblivious to the shriek of annoyance you elicit.

Speaking of which, Juner, you got a cranial helmet this month! You were so tough and brave about it: You wear it about 23.5 hours every day. The first weekend, we monitored your scalp and forehead, which grew red and angry and ran slick with sweat while your little body adjusted to the constant new warmth of head insulation. The first night you slept a bit restlessly. And then that was it: You had adjusted and your dad and I were awed. I'm sure it's not the most comfortable contraption in the world, but your sweet eyes and silly goose grin shine out from underneath it undaunted.

The underlying cause of the helmet (torticollis -- shortened, tightened muscles in your shoulder) requires ongoing treatment so that you might stop leaning and facing your head in the same direction too often. We torment you numerous times a day with exercises to loosen up that neck and pull your hyperextended arms forward. Stubborn as you are sweet, you fight it; every time we hold you, your arms automatically sweep backward like baby Superman until we work them forward over and over again, sometimes wondering if we're changing anything. We had an awesome physical therapist from Cedars come to the house and teach us new exercises and we're not there yet, but I promise you we're going to get you limbered up, sweet girl. For now, you're making amazing progress on your head shape and plagiocephaly and are seriously rocking your sweet blue sky helmet. Everywhere we go, you collect compliments on it and give reassurance to other parents and kiddos who are facing helmets in their future. Everywhere we go, you remain a warrior and a light.

Uly love, when you were born, you had a tiny red mark above your left eyebrow and when we asked about it the doctors said you probably got nicked in delivery. But every week that faint pink shadow grew a little darker and a little bigger until your wonderful pediatrician Dr. Val realized it was a hemangioma. A little "strawberry" birthmark that blossomed and grew. And when you were a couple of months old, they prescribed ointment for us to dab on it twice a day. Though these things typically go away by age five, yours was a little too close to the eye and they wanted to at least slow its growth to avoid any interference with your vision.

At first it did just that, it slowed. It grew, but by less each month. And then it stopped growing. And then it started shrinking, just a little. And now, it is full on fading. A red ring still loops around it but the pale skin of your sweet little forehead has peeked through and I can see that it will be gone soon. And this makes me want to cry, a little.

Like the gradient of preemie clothes to newborn clothes to 3 month clothes that I smell and clutch to me and fold up and finally pack away, regretfully, this marks a passage of time. This is a change in you. A thing you have been and then not been. This is how old you are, my love. Does that make any sense? For so long you were my baby with the magic red rose on his forehead and now you are my boy. So long and wiggly and strong and your birthmark is fading away just like your infanthood and it makes me stagger to realize that I not only love you, the you you are today and are becoming, with such buckling strength. I am fervently in love with the you you used to be too. And the sweet little Junie B Jones your sister used to be -- so tiny and fierce and electric on her little NICU cot. I have the ghost and memory of what you were, carved so deeply in my heart, even as you sprint on to the next evolution I will love. The next beautiful, bright thing you are becoming.

Thanksgiving came just after you turned seven months old and we spent the cozy, quiet day together. Just the four of us, in our pajamas too long, cooking a big meal and watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade and feeling complete. All day, I thought of two years ago when we were pregnant with your sister (I always assume she was a girl) and hadn't told many people yet and were surrounded by a joyful table of friends. So happy, so warm in our tiny house. We lost our girl and I tell you about her still sometimes and I like to think you have a big sister waiting to meet you someday. There was a lot to be grateful for that year, even if I could have peeked ahead to the brutality of letting her go a month later. I was so cracked open with gratitude just to have her then and I still am. What a privilege to have been her mom for a spell. All day I thought about last year, when we were pregnant again with you two and hadn't told most people yet. And things were so much scarier this time....we didn't have the same innocent joy of the previous year. I don't think we ever will again. But our gratitude this time was war torn, fought for, deeper. Holier. You were here and we weren't sure for how long, but we loved you so hard it was a promise. A pact and an atmosphere. For as long as I had you, I wanted you floating in our unabashed, wild love.

And now my lambs, you are here, tangling your feet around my arms while I nurse you. Grinning ecstatically when your dad comes home just seconds before bed time, getting you all riled up again. Having indescribable diaper blowouts on planes and stroking the weary strangers seated next to us. Growing real hair and losing your silly receding hairlines. Gaining weight and thickening into these solid, toddler-esque creatures. Remembering your grandparents and lighting up to see them. Trying pureed green beans and promptly throwing them up. Sitting in your big kid stroller and scoping the world we walk past so carefully, as if you're preparing to describe it many years from now. Laughing and laughing and laughing at our frantic efforts and memorizing ears. Cuddled against me in the carrier while I do dishes and tug on your sweet ham hock feet absentmindedly.

You are here, more and more every month. And tired as I am when you torment each other or fight over the same favorite toy or crank and cry in the car or won't sleep at midnight or poop up your back again and again and again, it still all feels too good to be true.

Dear Ulysses and Juniper,

A few weeks ago, you went to the beach for the first time in your lives. It made me think about the whole world....how many magnificent places don't at all exist in my understanding of the planet simply because I haven't seen them yet. But now you know the beach and the ocean and the briny smell of coral and kelp drying in the wind when the tide is low. And the snarls of rock that retreat into caves and charge up into formations out of the sea and glow rose gold in the sunset. You know about all of this and it all felt like presenting you with frankincense and myrrh. Like we had personally chosen and gift wrapped this wonder for you and I felt both invincible and humbled by the understanding that at least for the next few years, we get to do this for you over and over and over. We get to bring you the world and the world to you.

Your Daddy's whole family came out to spend a week with us in Malibu this past month and at sunset one night, we walked down the steep, crooked path to the sand of El Matador beach below the cliffs. And you looked so beautiful in that light. The whole family looked so beautiful and I watched your grandparents hold you and your uncle make you laugh and your auntie cheer you when you grew cold and scared in the wind and I thought: This is life, babies. Please don't ever stop scrambling out after nature or being knocked to your knees by the beauty of this earth or going to any length to spend time with family. This is everything.

Ulysses, one night recently, we took a walk and got back after dark and you had fallen asleep. And I carried you into the house and for a few minutes you were just entirely that heavy sweet weight. That full trusting release of childhood sleep and your head sagged to my shoulder and rested there. Already, at six months old, that's so rare, sweetheart. You don't put your head on our shoulders any more like you used to when you were a tiny babe. You're too busy now and the world is too near and fascinating and your head and giant harvest moon eyes oscillate nonstop. But when you sleep...Oh, babe. Those sweep of eyelashes over your grumpy sleepy face and perfect rosy cheeks. You are heaven. So I pinned down this night in my brain so I won't forget how you were heavy and still on my shoulder again, just for a spell.

My Juniper Jean, we dug out a hand me down mei tai carrier from Auntie Jen this month and it's your favorite carrier now. I think because it offers all the security of being tied to us along with enough freedom of movement for you to wriggle your arms and choke our necks and fiddle with our buttons. You're such an interested girl! And so I pull you up and wrap you to my chest and we wander around the house together, tidying up the kitchen or looking at photographs of the places I've been and the places we'll go together and you chew on the straps and smile, half hid behind the fabric. So safe and snug with your mom but free to kick those sweet flappy legs and peek out at your favorite things -- the tapestry from India above the couch with all its wild colors and tiny mirrors and sequins and golden thread. Emaline the cat, who you have only just started to realize exists and has earned your infatuation.

June bug, you found your fingers this month and Uly's favorite past time -- slurping them nonstop -- has become yours as well. You rolled for the first time this month and love chasing your own feet when they appear above your head or you lean forward far enough to topple onto them. I wonder where you think they go in between these discoveries? Sometimes when you nurse, you stroke your own forehead over and over gently like petting a cat and I just want to tear up at your tenderness. On weekends, you come into bed with us in the morning to snuggle and wake up slowly and we lie on our sides and look at each other and your twinkling eyes and ready smile are just an orchestra swelling, the northern lights dawning, a solar and lunar eclipse in the same day. You take our breath away is what I mean to say.

Uly boy, you're such a strong little man. You can roll so well now -- over and back -- though that doesn't mean you choose to. There are days when you're in the mood and days where you defiantly lie on your back and waggle your toes in the air while we wait hopefully in vain. Your laugh is perhaps the best sound I've ever heard. When we earn it (doing monster growls and zombie hands is a favorite) we repeat our trick over and over and over and try to stifle our own giggles so we can hear yours, until you hum down into quiet, mostly over-it, polite bemusement. I record the sound of it and when you go down to sleep, even as my brain is ordering me to launch into one of the 297 items on my to do list, I sit and watch you on my phone over and over, laughing again at your laugh or dear Junie's laugh and wishing a little that you were still awake. (How is it possible to both long for the relief of good long naps and to miss you when you are down? It's a paradox).

You both ate real food for the first time this month!! The first day, you sputtered and gagged and blanched and recoiled from the sweet potatoes and your daddy and I laughed and took too many pictures. I had mixed feelings about this milestone but now that it's here, it's more than ok for you to walk through it. It's sort of magical to watch you learn what food is and see your consumption skills improve on a daily basis. To see you discover tastes and textures and cover yourself in a coat of squash or avocado or bananas. We are losing the impossible battle to clean you entirely. Hours and hours after a meal, I find squishes of food tucked into your neck folds like scarves up sleeves and quarters behind ears. You're little magicians, for sure.

I hate to break the news that you are also champion droolers. We bought little bandana bibs I used to think were hipstery and dumb and now save so many outfit changes as you sop them over and over between nap times. Your mouths are fountains of spit. Our faces are constantly slick with the goopy, smeary collateral damage of kissing you (still worth it!)

Dear Juniper and Ulysses,

It's hilariously fitting that my note regarding your fifth month of life comes more than two weeks late. That probably says more about the state of life than I could in paragraphs and paragraphs. But when have I ever passed up the opportunity to be verbose? Settle in, sweethearts.

It's the first week of a month of Thanksgiving and I find nearly all my moments of eucharisteo -- holy joy, sacred gratitude -- are tied to you tangentially or outright.

The first gratitude: Thank God that your challenging developments always seem to arrive alongside the beautiful developments, mingling together like the confluence of rivers so you can't welcome one without the other.

Uly, sweet boy, your body went on sleep strike this past month. You stopped sleeping your wonderful, easy schedule of 7 pm to 2:30 am -- rousing briefly to eat -- and going back down until 7 am. And now instead you wail awake here and there, wailing and ultimately charge headlong, irrevocably into the day while it is still dark. It's hard to identify the cause in a handful of suspects: the first bad nights' sleep came after five month shots and alongside days of crankiness. Or maybe it was a belated four month sleep regression? A developmental leap? Teething? The advice we maybe foolishly took to move your 2 am feed up to 11 pm (which resulted in a 4 or 5 or 6 am wake time we can't seem to undo)?

We are tired again after getting too comfortable with your sleep prowess the last few months, but we try to have sympathy for the fact that your little mind and body are learning to do so much right now it must be nearly impossible to still them all night long. You are not a child for stillness regardless, my little dervish. So we are surviving. And celebrating the nights where you sleep soundly and fully.

This was also the month where you got a jumperoo and fell so deeply, instinctively in love with it we watch you like a television, delighted. You jump so high and hard, it's a little nerve-wracking and I think this is a warning shot...a metaphor for the joyful speed and furious vigor with which you will scramble and charge through life. There is a happy terror in watching you clamor closer to independence, if that makes sense. The illusion that we can protect you and control your movement is not long for this world, I guess is what I mean. And I am both so excited for you to take your own reigns a bit more and sometimes so scared for you. But I want to teach you -- we almost never regret choosing growth and excitement and adventure over fear and comfort. Momma needs to remember that too.

You rolled for the first time this month. We screamed so loudly I think we scared you off trying again for a while, but it was magic to watch! You rocked and rocked closer and closer like an engine trying to catch and then you were up and over. Now June bug is getting close and it's like the world's greatest instant replay to have the chance to watch her learn it too. Your grasp misses less now and everything within range of being caught is destined for your mouth. You and your sis are fascinated by the Itsy Bitsy Spider and somehow magically calmed by the Avett Brothers' Murder in the City, which in retrospect may be a troubling choice for children.

You are an optimist, dear Ul, just waiting for the world to walk by and entertain you. Always sure that it is coming. Eyes as big as the moon with a grin to match -- we fall over ourselves making you laugh and we are rewarded and rewarded and rewarded. The mirror in the hallway has grubby little fingerprints all over it, that I can't bring myself to clean off. Every time I walk past them, I picture your coy grin as your Daddy holds you up to flirt with yourself -- grinning, then tucking your head into his chest, then popping back out again to get another look at that handsome boy.

My Juniper Jean, you just keep blossoming into life. You can be slow to reach a boil, but now you are roiling. Waking in naps and the night not to cry but to blabber and sing and make fake coughing noises that crack you up and us too until you wake your brother and we all cringe knowing there will be hell to pay for that.

You laugh and laugh at ridiculous games, demanding them on repeat. Your favorites are piloting spaceships (perched on my raised knees) and shooting down enemy combatants (Dad and Uly). You love the intergalactic chases and gunshots and explosions best of all. You adore tipping your head way way back to watch the world upside down, and giggle and giggle while I kiss your tiny exposed neck 1,000 times in a row. Someday, I presume you'll beg me to stop but until you can talk, you're at my mercy, kid.

There were a string of nights where, inexplicably overtired, you screamed and raged again bedtime for an hour or two. Sobbing inconsolably and bruising our hearts while we tried all of Dr. Harvey Karp's tricks, rusty from not needing them so long (lucky bastards). But there were *more* days when you bravely did your neck stretches while we bribed you with Beyonce, singing and shoulder shimmying while we pulled those taut muscles against themselves and tried to buy you more room, more range, more comfort. From NICU nights to these exercises you hate, you continue to be courageous and stubborn as hell, sweet girl. Your Dad and I are so proud of you it aches in me like flood waters rising.

I stopped tandem nursing you this month and nurse you individually now. Marking out time for just Uly and Momma and just Junie and Momma to feed and it has made the most profound difference. I wholly get the beauty now, minus the stress and awkward balancing act. I get it. Juniper Jean, you curl around me while you nurse, unhurried and sleepy. Eyes closed and body wrapped into me so close it's like I am the shore and you are the sea. We are meshed. Uly Verne, your greedy, trusting latch is so beautiful I feel foolish trying to describe it. I won't ever forget your sweet fingers stroking my shirt or reaching for my hand and holding tight.

There is a lesson here. I told a friend in the IVF trenches that I am finally learning that there can be no way to give enough to both of you all of the time. There's no fairness and no adequacy with just one mom and two babes. And so I'm choosing moments. Letting one of you be entertained by toys or toes or lovies for a bit while I cradle the other, slipping off into a few sacred minutes where I connect with just you Juniper or just you Ulysses and I swear by the shine of your eyes you know it. Right now, it's just you.

Naps are shorter and less predictable, while work stays as busy as ever and I lean in and in and sometimes still fail to catch it all. Admittedly, there were hard days and a few crying phone calls to your Nana this month. The arrogance or innocence of new motherhood let me believe that establishing a sweet routine meant it would stay. And now I am learning not about schedules and pseudo control but about stretching into the void where you can't possibly understand how everything will get done. But somehow, what matters does. By divine grace.

Month four raced by. Full of adventures, of growth and goodbyes. Of changes so frequent we never knew who we'd be greeting each morning when you squawked and wriggled us awake,  Ulysses Verne and Juniper Jean.

For the first time ever, I left you all day. For four days in a row! The first morning, I backed out of my parents' drive way in the dark, wet morning and I cried for miles of the two lane drive because I felt like I was abandoning you (oh those NICU evening flashbacks!). I was so afraid you would feel alone or forgotten.

The second, third and fourth days I cried, half ashamed, because you were so resilient and happy with my parents and so obviously ok without me.

Nana and Bapa watched you up in Mora and did yeoman's work keeping you on your schedule so that calm consistency was maintained -- while also attentively culling newness and discovery out of you. Suddenly, our kiddos were big enough to not just sit in the bouncy seat briefly while I sprinted the other through a bath. They LOVED the bouncy seat in a way I hadn't anticipated. Legs charging and crashing down, bouncing their own bums like tiny ships on big waves and cracking themselves up over and over. My parents sent pictures of their delicious, intoxicated little grins and I smiled back and ached hard for the 70 miles between us.

Each day, they scanned the house I grew up in frantically like data, mesmerized by Nana's flowers and Bapa's tools and vegetables, carried around and spoiled like tiny emperors. They were held for hours by arms that were not ours and they fell soundly in love. And through the petty heartache of realizing they don't need only us in life, pride rang around me like a bell. Look at these strong beautiful babies and how they already trust their place in the world. Already have radar for good people they can relax into because they love them so fiercely and will protect them so finely. For people like my sister and her good, kind children who huddled around Uly and Junie and cheered them and laughed at them and cooked for us and sent back some of the love I have felt for them so intensely these past 13 years.

All of which is also to say: I started back to work this month and was filled with a churning mix of gratitude and longing. How lucky am I to mostly work from home, part time, with people I love and work I adore? How lucky am I to fill the hours away from you lambs with passionate work that matters to other kids whose parents love them as much as I love you?

Damn lucky. I work the early early shift, and your Dad gets you up and brings you into the day now. From my desk in the dining room, I hear muffled pieces of you cooing and sputtering and laughing at him while he unwraps your swaddles and changes your diapers and reads you stories in voices electric with energy. This time is your time now and it's a joy to see it from a distance, secure and happy as a snow globe. I ache with missing you in those hours but there is peace too; I know you are ok with your Dad and I know it's ok for me to step back and hold back one pocket of my heart to care for other things.

In the late morning and afternoons, it's our time again, my loves. I can hardly wait for you to wake up. To spring you from baby jail and watch Junie's arms shoot straight up overhead the second her swaddle is removed, while Uly's butt raises heavenward in solidarity. Straight into the air with giddy freedom! You're nursing better and then you aren't and the whole production is a beautiful, hard stew of feeding then pumping to maintain supply and worrying because babies don't come with a gauge to prove they've eaten enough (though you really should consider that upgrade, God). But Junie, there is maybe nothing in the world so beautiful as your eyes and that silly center forehead curl when you gaze up at me while you're eating. I would launch 1,000 ships for those eyes indeed, and head the charge of whatever battle you needed fighting.

Ulysses, you remain our sweet wild man. Even when you are lying down, you do baby crunches, grunting and struggling toward sitting. Your legs run marathons just waiting so impatiently for your body to catch up. The world has no idea what is thundering toward it in a matter of months. Your grins are frenetic and contagious and when you shine them at strangers, I see their postures change with this jolt of mirth, with surprise -- as if your little crazy mouth has bestowed a blessing or luck on them. And they jaunt away, happier than they were a moment ago. That's your super power, little man. You are air born joy.

And Junie dear, you are joining that campaign with gusto. All of a sudden in the past few weeks, you are our boisterous flirt. Our clumsy social butterfly. Our happy ham. Our talker! After we feed you and put you back down to sleep at 3 am, Ul drifts off immediately while you lie grinning and chatting loudly and amiably. Cracking your Dad and me up as we giggle silently in the dark trying to record your speech. Who can be mad at this sweet, hilarious dialogue? You sound so happy I expect your charming babble to draw sleepy neighbors ready to answer your silly siren call. You are coy and it takes time for your cocked head, drooly grins to unfurl, but when they do, it is a megawatt, blindingly sweet reward for patience.

You met so many of our dearest friends this month and let them cuddle you and it did our hearts so good to watch these tender first days of what I hope is a lifetime of love and learning with these people.

At night, your Dad and I stand in the kitchen cobbling together dinner or reheating leftovers and watching your silly legs lift and crash on the monitor as you fall asleep. We analyze the day and tell stories from our respective time with them and invariably he says, "Let's go wake them up!" And I laugh at how lucky you are to have a Dad so deeply in love with you. I pray this love grounds you in your worth and gives you confidence enough to convince others of their worth too. That it overflows you with generous grace for the friends and strangers and colleagues and loves you will encounter. That it both anchors and propels you.

Chris and I agreed the other night that being parents to very young children is so much like being freshly, dumbly in love. I am uniquely mesmerized by everything you do, even as it is being done by millions of other humans around the world and has been done forever and ever amen. But unlike romantic love, where that delight soon relaxes into something deeper and more sustainable, somehow this love and infatuation seems only to intensify wildly. Heaven help us, we agreed.

Three little months. One season. And somehow it feels like permanence. Like, if we shoved off into some dark, unknowable waters on May 15, on some maiden voyage, we have all hit shore now together. Immigrants into familyhood.

My dear Ulysses and Juniper, you are so much more alive this month, if that makes any sense. You have stretched out into this world, so present and vibrant -- punching holes in solar systems and displacing oceans. You are staking your places. You are funny, silly, sometimes crabby, endlessly tactile creatures. You love touching: If I am holding your brother or sister while you sit in your cozy little podster nest waiting, you will stretch your fingers or toes out onto my arm. Just to keep that connection humming between us. There's something so much like being chosen to be touched like this. So much like love flowing back to me, and even this tiny reciprocal sprout of it is delirium inducing. You stare up while you nurse with your giant animal eyes and smilie in response to our antics and pleading and I am shameless enough to admit: It is easier to do everything when I know you know us. You are really here now, with us, and it is amazing.

On weekends, June bug, we take long baths together and your little legs froggy out and kick like muscle memory and I wonder what those eight months were like for you. Wish you could describe to me the pool you grew in and what dawning into your own life feels like. You love the bath, like your Mama, and you melt down after too much time with people and noise, like your Mama. You need your quiet.

We realized somewhere last month that you dear Juniper are almost always looking to the right. We've been working with you to turn your head to the left during tummy time and when you're laying on Mama or Daddy, but you grumble and fuss and we suspect it's uncomfortable if not painful. We're headed to a physical therapist this week to learn more exercises and figure out the problem, so be prepared to get mad at us more often! When you lay down to sleep, we gently guide your head to the right. Then I step back in the dark and watch as your sweet little face ticks slowly back right until the cheek meets the sheet, like a giant tree falling very slowly in the forest. You are a girl who knows what she wants.

Ul-man, you have discovered your voice in a whole new way. You have this wonderful / horrible new high pitched holler that makes me laugh so hard, though sometimes it means you are moments from sobbing. You sound like a wild monkey, like the macaques Christine and I met on the windy, craggy top of Gibraltar 100 years ago (remember how they stole that old man's hat and we covered our laughs and felt terrible because he was on a last trip before dying?) I've never heard a noise like this and if I could choose ten sounds to trap in a can from your childhood, this one would be a contender.

Both of you are squawking and squealing and we mimic you and mirror your tongue jabs and you stare up, transfixed and delighted, I guess, by the fact that we have tongues too. What a wonderful coincidence! Sometimes after a yelp, you just hold your dear little mouths open so wide like caverns of intent - just desperately trying to remember how you made that sound five seconds ago. Yearning to control your own power. It's like watching magic to observe you learning your own abilities.

Uly, last week you reached your little hand out toward a toy bar for like ten minutes and you never quite made contact. But you also didn't give up or get frustrated...your concentration and effort was just so intensely, profoundly beautiful. I was so achingly proud of you! It took all my willpower not to just grab your sweet, chubby hand and guide it to the toy. It is so tough to let you learn to do things for yourself when it's a strain for you....but I know that time spent on hard things is the only thing that strengthens and refines us for the next hard thing. I know that I am going to struggle all your life with letting you struggle. Letting you be uncomfortable and overwhelmed and scared and grapple through it. But I promise I will try to learn because I don't want to rob you of that sacred reward, that golden victory of getting through and the buzzing, intoxicating pride that comes with it and fuels the next endeavor.

Speaking of your hands, oh how those amazing, adorable, sweaty little things started to stink this month. What do you monkeys do with them?! Ulysses, you have giant chubby man hands. Holding them is so satisfying, they're so commanding and undeniable. But oh do they smell like rotten cheese by the end of the day! So now you both get sponge baths in between real baths. We scrub those stinky little mitts and perform careful, surgical degriming of the chafed, red rolls in your necks where milk spills and yeast starts to grow. It is at once disgusting and precious.

My mind staggers backward at the vulnerability and responsibility of this: You need us to check your beautiful little bodies, deep inside the rolls where you have grown so full and warm, for messes and injuries and intrusions. You need us to care for you that attentively. Isn't that gorgeous?

Junie, you have started wrestling with your swaddle sack. Even in your sleep, you wiggle and thrash to pull those tiny, chilly petal fingers up and free. It's such a Uly move, it cracks me up to see you fight and flail so stubbornly...like Houdini, but less coordinated. Like Gob Bluth. It's so unlike you, but you are different this month. More vocal and demanding and less patient at times while Uly has relaxed a little. And I think it's good for you both, to ebb and flow. I don't want to compare you to each other or to wish you'd be like your sister or you'd act more like your brother.

Promise me you'll be wholly what you are right now. Good or tough or funny or frustrated. Just be who you are and Dad and I will adjust. The fluidity of you is a beautiful, strange thing. Let it carry you, ok?

A prim British doula changed our life last month...helped us understand a structured eat, play, sleep routine that carries us through the day with dependable little pockets of time like shimmering oases to grab lunch or shower. She taught us how to do bedtime and night feedings better and that you two really do need more formal, swaddled, dark room, long, away from us naps and not just lie-where-you-are cat naps through the day. You moved out of our bedroom and into your nursery and the first two nights, my heart ached and ached with missing you. I imagined we'd keep you with us so much longer, but the truth is you sleep easier and deeper together in your big crib. Just the two of you in that dark quiet room. Where every fabric and gift and picture is stitched with so much love and anticipation or celebration of your arrival. It calms you I think, and again, I take a step back and let you two be ok without me.

We sleep more now -- at night you do two long stretches between feeding and your Dad and I can often get seven hours total! SEVEN. I'm so proud of you sometimes I choke up. Sometimes, I hold your bodies, which feel heavier every day, and think: What if you wouldn't have made it? Maybe I'm not supposed to say that out loud, but I think it. Uly, what if you wouldn't have fought so hard in utero, or what if we'd checked a week too late and missed your distress? Junie, June Bug, what if the surfactant treatment wouldn't have worked? What if those tiny lungs that raise and lower your beautiful big belly would have given out?  And I cry embarrassing floppy tears on your warm foreheads and thank God, eucharisteo!, that you are here. Thank God! And also, why God? Why don't all the babies that are loved make it? Multiple times a week I cry for that, for the moms without these bellies to hold right now... I am sorry.  

I said to your Daddy the other night that things are getting easier. And then you woke up a dozen times in three hours and we laughed in the dark and tried not to say anything else that might jinx us. But in the morning, tired, we still dance and make up songs about stinky chickens and take long walks under big shade trees and clean up errant poop and oh life is sweet. We also grumble at each other and have to apologize and clarify later, when your crying stops and it is less fiercely hot in our little home. Days are long and tiring and dreamy and endlessly repetitive all at once.