6 months (and change)

this literally is the beginning, starting from a's 6 month and change "birthday" - because she turned 6 months about a week ago - but it is also about change. ahh, yes. double entendre!

her 6 month birth-verssary struck me pretty deeply. it finally occurred to me the enormous changes we have all been through. i genuinely wish i had been better at doing this since day one because seeing this transformation on paper would've truly resonated how far we have come.

i remember the day she was born and how i felt every emotion so deeply that i felt as though i was floating above the events that were unfolding... packing the car, taking the "last" couple photo, driving to KC and finally getting to say to C "we're going to have her!" instead of "this is the road we're going to take when we go to have her!", eating dinner, walking around spending anxious money in target because we couldn't show up 2 hours early for check in. i can't explain the feeling of entering a room with two hearts -- knowing you won't leave until you have a third. i'm already a mess thinking about it.

i feel like i still haven't lost touch with the way i felt emotion that day. it might be dulled but everything feels deeper and with more impact than ever before. i cry harder, smile wider, laugh deeper, yell louder. it is all to extremes- to both my detriment and benefit. the first month it felt euphoric. i hardly remember that first month because it feels so dreamy. the second felt surreal. the third month transitioned. the fourth felt so heavy, the fifth overwhelming. we've hit the sixth and i finally feel relatively level.

i went through a really rough patch in the heavy and overwhelming months. i still am struggling to build past the weight i carry from all that is pulling me down from that time. i don't even know how or why or what it was. i have no answers for anyone, especially myself. it just happened. it just felt like sometimes i loved so much it hurt and other times i hurt so much that reminders of that love is all that got me through. some days still feel like that.

A has changed, but i have too. in so many ways. it is no wonder women struggle so much at the beginning of motherhood. you think that losing yourself would be a long, arduous, trying process where you'd struggle to maintain the identity you spent a lifetime building... but it can slip through like a tiny grain of sand in the palm of your hands. in the blink of an eye. without you ever even knowing.

so i guess this has become more about my journey to find the sand ... or to accept that it is gone and begin again.