Letting go. Or not.

She asks thoughtful questions all of the time.

Like, "How are children built? Like, how do you build a child?"

She wonders about the clouds.  "How do the clouds fill up with rain."

And then questions the response weeks later. "Well, mommy, if the clouds have rain. And I don't know how those drops come off the ground because I can't see them. Then, if I jumped in a cloud, would I be swimming in it, like you swim in a pool?
And the 'miracle of life' just gives her all sorts of things to wonder about. While swinging today and pumping her legs like there was no tomorrow, she asked "Mommy, when a baby is in your tummy all of the body parts are separate.  So when the baby is coming out, how do all the parts get back together?"  This gave us a lot to talk about and come to find out, she was looking at my ultrasound pictures of her. She was very accurately picking out the body parts (on a 3D ultrasound) and to her it seemed as if the parts were all unattached. 

When she's in my lap, standing close by, or lying beside me she seems so big.

When she's walking away from me and I really look at her, she seems so small.  She is just now four and a half.  She is ready for school and my issue with letting go is presenting itself full force.  She wants so badly to go. She longs to stay. I want her here with me.

He wants to be in the kitchen.  All. the. time.  Dare I step foot in the room that spans the main part of our house, without him.  The Learning Tower is his perch and food is his love.

Declan will knead dough all day long. Just add flour and he creates.  Adding herbs, sometimes crackers or cookies, whatever strikes his fancy.  He smells dough in the mixer or rising in a bowl, inhales, exhales, and say "mmmm, I love that smell mommy."  He's precise, careful, and methodical.  He told me the other day at the park, while swinging, that he was "tasting the air." I asked him if he was ready to get down because Isabella wanted to go to the climbing wall. He told me "no, I stay here and get down myself when I stop swinging.  I opening my mouth to taste the wind." 

I will tell Declan one day that he inherited that 'love of dough' from his Mia. My mom, for as long as I can remember, has talked about her love of dough. I can remember her making pizza dough or bread and kneading it and talking about how she loves the way it feels. And loves that it's 'alive.'  Declan 'gets' that feeling already.  And I'm pretty sure I know where it came from...

 

She is fierce.  She likes  loves to climb.  Quinn has recently declared sleep, the enemy.  This third child, thinks she ranks right up there with the older two.  She is fearless. She is sweet and gives the tightest hugs and the most perfect kisses. Quinn is my baby and she knows it.  She has a certain tug on me and has since she was born onto our bed and quickly into my arms.  We had a moment during her birth that deeply attaches her to me.  Right now she loves nothing more than her family and life (well, and maybe nursing).

And together, they form a band. A team.  They look out for eachother, they fight, they make up, they hug, they shove.  Their favorite game is to play the parents of eachother.  They think Quinn is their baby (and Quinn, very clearly, does not consider herself a baby).

The idea of "letting go" haunts me at the quietest times.  The fact that one day, I'll have to let all of them go.  Off to school, off to work, out into the world, into their own home... The inevitable is hard to swallow.  I sleep better knowing that although I will one day let go, they will hold on to eachother.  Isabella and Declan have started sleeping together at night.  It has given them both the security that they crave to go longer stretches without waking. They have eachother's warmth and the comfort of another body. And when I hear them on the monitor, talking to eachother as they wake up, and then hear their little feet hitting the steps and running across the hallway, hand in hand into our bedroom, I realize that they have eachother.  And as long as they are connected to the people that love them the most, they will be okay.  I have two sisters and a brother that I can very confidently lean on.  I want to be as good as my parents were in teaching the meaning of family.  That way, when they fall, which I know one day they will, they will have two parents to catch them as well as eachother and so many more people that love them so deeply. 

The days that I gave birth to these fragile little souls, were the days that I decided (again, again, and again) to commit to my life never being the same.  Is it just me, or is having kids the scariest yet happiest thing you'll ever do? 

Isabella told me the other day that she remembers when I had Quinn.  She said that she woke up and daddy had a surprise for her.  He brought her downstairs and into our bedroom and I was there holding Quinn. Then she told me that she remembers that Aunt Kelly let them have twizzlers in the playroom.  Then she told me that next time I have a baby, she really wants to see.  She doesn't want to sleep through it again. 
Declan told me that he'd rather have a cat.
Quinn smiled. 
And when my kids engage in life like they are so strongly doing right now, I have to remind myself to drink it in so deeply, so strongly, and with such memory.
They amaze me. Yes, I'm their mom so of course they amaze me.  And amaze me, they always will.