It’s plain to see that all we need is more balance, but that’s a problem much easier acknowledged than solved. We’re on our way though, with baby steps, as I learn to enjoy our little moments and you clean more floors and bottles than you used to.

We sat on the couch, side by side, like we often do, her hand in my hair for comfort, while she chatted about her time at her nannies, her friends, …

“You’re a boy?” Lauren finally understood. Almost. “But…you’re wearing a dress.” Before Max found the words he wanted to use, Evan, Brave Knight Evan, put his arm around his little brother’s shoulders.

“No one in the family would ever hurt him.”

It’s incredible, how effortlessly I trusted her. I let her opinion win and as a result I fell into the unforgiving hands of postpartum anxiety – because, of course, that destructive friend was me.

Kindness is contagious. Kindness dissolves anger, rage, and violence. Even when kindness is beaten down, it finds a way to prevail. All we have to do is look for it.

hat a dresser. Somebody really cared about him, you know? Someone paid attention to his clothes. 

As I hear my oldest say she wishes she didn’t have a sister I wonder how to explain to my daughters, now 3 and 6, the importance of being friends. They don’t understand that one day they will rely on each other as much as they rely on me now.

My childhood was mine; my experiences exist as a narrative. What she gleans from them is her choice. She does not need to replicate my life. Religion, rituals, clothes, music, spirituality, cultural conflicts – I will lay it all out in front of her and she can weave them together in a way that makes sense to her. 

All the doctors, the nurses, the blood draws, the ER filled with sick children including our own would have destroyed him if he hadn't steeled himself against it. But, one look at me would have knocked down that stoic wall he worked so hard to build, protecting him from the reality: our baby is sick, very sick, and we can't fix it.