2013//2014

I began reflecting on the New Year back in the middle of December.  A lot changed for us last December.  Around the middle of the month, we packed up all of our belongings into a moving truck and locked the door of our first home--a house that had been our dream and then spent about eight months trying to sell.  It had been a long, long road, and then we moved back home.  About a week later (the 22nd, I believe), we closed on our new house in Chesapeake.  Everything about it was bittersweet.

In that time, we also announced that I was 12 weeks pregnant with our second baby. So much has changed.  So much has changed.

And maybe it also is pressing on my heart so much because Eliot will be turning three years old in nine days.  He won't be a baby at all anymore.  His appearance from last year has changed so much.  He looked big to me back then, but now he is... so much more grown, even.  I didn't see it as it was happening, yet here he is:  a boy.

Looking back, at the beginning of the year, Eliot was in full-swing terrible twos.  Tantrums and melt-downs in public.  Everything felt like a fight.  He was going through a food strike too--he would only eat fruit snacks.  I felt like a bad parent.  Because nothing was easy, and I so rarely "won".

I know I didn't do everything perfectly, but we made it through.  Looking back, we've made such progress.  Melt-downs in public are rare instead of common and usually are the result of being over-tired and hungry.  We face new challenges now.  Eliot asks "why?" about everything, including silly things like why the sun is up or why the aquarium is closed at bedtime or why he can't put cars on Jack's head.  He is curious.  He is exploring boundaries and finding his pecking order, so to say.  Sometimes I feel like a bad parent again, but for different reasons.  However, this time I know we'll make it through again to new challenges.  In 2015, I'll look back and say how things have changed.

In the beginning of 2013, I had a two-year-old and an ever-changing body with a growing belly.  Our family has grown, changed, and become more full.  It is hard for me to believe that Jack has been with us for half of the year.  Pregnancy (and the year itself) seemed to drag on forever.  Both have ended, though, and Jack is far from the newborn we brought home from the hospital.  I knew I wanted two kids, but even when I was pregnant I didn't realize how incomplete our family was without him.  I didn't know how full a second baby would make our home feel (I mean in a good way).  I have written it before, but our Jack truly healed my heart after it had been broken by loss on June 1, 2012.

2012 was a hard year for us.  We went through a lot of heartache and uncertainty.  A lot of loss.  A lot of questions.  A lot of family members in pain.  I had hope that 2013 would be different, that we could start over, and that perhaps we could find healing.  We had a great year, and I can't wait to see what 2014 will bring.