a time of understanding.

{thompson ave, where every house is lit up}

On October 13 last year, I sat in the American Embassy in Santiago, Chile, watching the miners being rescued on CNN, feeling my baby hiccup and kick, and eavesdropping on the consul interviewing my husband for his visa. We were in between seasons, in between continents, in between imaginings.

Within a month, we said our goodbyes, sold off bits of our lives, and packed the rest into duffle bags. At nearly eight months pregnant, we moved to the northern hemisphere--for another round of winter. I thought moving would be simple. That we're so adaptable that having a baby with no stability would still be a piece of cake.

Well, there was a lot more to this whole having a baby thing than I'd imagined. But somehow we made it work, Somehow every day these days--if even for a breath or two--I arrive to a place where it is as fun as I pictured it all those months ago.

I'm used to being sleep deprived, and at the same time I'm getting a little more sleep. We're growing a mini patio garden, we nurture (and occasionally murder--sorry!) houseplants. S + I take turns cooking. I turn the heat up too high, S turns it down. Sometimes the TV is on when Rowan is in the room, and I don't freak out. I give baths and nurse baby back to sleep at night. S makes me coffee in the morning (and sometimes in the afternoon). Rowan grabs garland off the Christmas tree and swats at the reachable houseplants. He pries the outlet covers out of the sockets. He explores, looks back to give a foxy smile, then continues to explore something a little further away.

We understand each other, and that understanding is magic. So we move to the rumpumpumpum beginnings of our family's rhythm. We are a family.

That family feeling didn't happen overnight. But it did happen. This is what I'm thinking about when I'm feeling all Christmasy for the first time in years.

What's on your mind?