I was so lucky to have my mama with me on mother's day. My parents were here for the weekend and everything about those three days was just what we needed. On Friday we made a fire in the pit in our backyard and mum brought out a giant pot of meat she had marinated with her very special recipe. It was the perfect temperature outside and as the scent of bug spray and smoke enveloped me I could feel myself relaxing down to my bones. Dad's favorite French radio station crooned through his ipad and the meat sizzled over the fire. We talked around our table until all the food was gone and eventually made our way to the living room, cups of tea in hand. We talked about the hard times and the good times from the past couple of weeks. The teary phone calls. The texts in the middle of the night. 

And right there it hit me - my baby may grow in size and may develop her mental abilities but she'll always be my baby. I may miss how small she used to be, how perfectly soft her skin was and how yummy those chubby legs feel. I may miss feeling her breath on my neck as I rock her to sleep or washing that downy hair of hers in the bath. But the way this tiny, for now, person yearns for my love will never change. Because no matter how old I am when I'm feeling lost and hurt and broken there's nothing like mummy and daddy's voice to unleash a torrent of tears and make that owie feel better. As I've grown older the owie's get harder and harder to fix (some are just plain unfixable) but there's something about the comfort that comes from feeling like you can be small again in someone's eyes. 

My hope and dream more than anything is that no matter what happens, no matter what we go through, that my sweet babies can always feel that I am their safe place. That no matter how tall they are, how old they are or how smart they are they can still curl up next to me and let those tears run down so that I can wipe them away. I know that one day their boo boos will be too big for me to fix so for now I will take solace and be grateful for the fact that some cuddles and kisses can make everything right. 

As their mother I have the blessed responsibility to be their protector and I don't think there's anything more honorable than that. I daily see the trust this little girl puts in me and I pray I never lose it. I pray that she can always come to me and know that in my arms lives acceptance, love and adoration. 

Do you know that Scorpions' song I'm talking about? "I follow the Moskva, down to Gorky Park, listening to the wind of change." I grew up listening to it, it was on a "love song" compilation cd that the now defunct KLM airlines put out back in the 90s. The wind of change... I always felt that song had a lovely nostalgic and sad vibe to it and it's encompassed my feelings on life many a time over the years. Not so much the lyrics even but just certain riffs of the guitar here and there. I suppose this is a very roundabout way of telling you that the wind of change has come and blown into our house recently. It's come to blow us all the way to... HOT-lanta!! Yes, the city where the players play... (sorry I had to, I just couldn't help myself). 

It seems that our time here at the cabin is coming to a close. It's a bittersweet feeling for sure, but at the same time we've never felt more ready for a change - it was time. You see we never saw the cabin as our permanent home, more than anything we saw it as an incubator of sorts, a place where we could get our footing back, figure out our future and start a family. Perhaps due to the fact that we married young, our early twenties were as tumultuous as they are for most - searching for meaning, searching for the right careers, searching for our calling, in short searching for ourselves. And I'll be honest with you - we made a lot of mistakes. Some of them we paid for dearly, some barely left a scratch and others we will forever be grateful for. We've grown up a lot since that day in August when we said I do (I swear when I look at photos of us we look like complete babies) and as life would have it we've become a bit wiser, a bit more hardened and a hint more cynical than maybe we used to be, but all in all it's made us better, I think. 

We've been ready to break out of this shell for a close to a year now and we've been knocking on doors for over five months but our timing is not always God's timing and oof was our patience ever tested. There's nothing harder than feeling so ready for something and being told to wait, and wait, and wait, and wait some more and then still wait... Especially for someone as impatient as myself. I'm not going to lie there were moments on this journey where things felt incredibly dark, it seemed as though every door was materializing into a wall before our very eyes and by the end we felt completely boxed in, out of ideas, out of options, out of plans. And maybe we just weren't ready yet, maybe it wasn't quite time. 

And then in one moment everything changed. We began to talk of our life here in past tense and our every conversation is now full of dreams of our future in a new state, a new city a new home. Life here at the cabin has been so quiet and at times lonesome but when we came here those were the things we craved. The silence, the solitude it all worked to help us grow - to mold us into the husband and wife and mother and father we needed to be. But now? Now we couldn't be more thrilled about the idea of newness!! City life (I've already researched all the Whole Foods, Trader Joe's and malls in the area and I quite literally squeal at the idea of having any of those less than 20 minutes from our house!!), a social life and something outside of the rural country life we've come to love. Don't get me wrong I will miss our dirt roads, farms and neighbors dearly but right now my heart and soul are craving something fresh and our home is abuzz with new energy. 

I'm so excited to have the opportunity to live close enough to friends and family where they don't have to drive two plus hours to see us. I'm excited about the possibility of enrolling Birdie in some classes where she can interact with other kiddies. I'm just plain excited about everything! The cabin was our safe place, it nurtured and grew us but at this point we've pretty much outgrown it both literally (I was at a complete loss as to how I was going to fit two kids in this house) and figuratively and this change is going to give both papa bear and I the opportunity to grow in any and every which way that God sees fit. 

On a more practical note I would be eternally grateful to any of you for advice about where to live, eat and play in Atlanta! We are beyond elated to explore this new-to-us city!!!

shirt - madewell, jeans - target, shoes - sam edelman, watch - target, glasses - warby parker

Birdie has less and less patience for my outfit photos these days which means that they have to be quick and often involve me making funny faces (as you can witness above). It's funny when you think about it just how much free time one has before a baby comes along to do as one pleases. I often find myself wishing I could go back and give my past self a good scolding for taking all that free time for granted. Now I have this tiny little person that is always engaged in one of the following activities: a) yelling at me or something (if it's not me, more often than not it's a bird) b) whining c) making erratic body movements that often result in a booboo d) throwing things e) getting into some sort of trouble (if I don't lock our pantry she will be in it in five seconds and scarfing down a box of cheddar bunnies, i.e., there goes dinner!) or occasionally all of the above. So essentially the only "me time" I have is when I'm in the shower (usually done while she naps) or when I sleep. If you weren't a multitasker before you had kids you sure become one after. Gone are the days of leisurely doing one thing at a time, instead I work, eat, feed and clean at the same time. Effectiveness of any of these activities best not be measured... 

Although I haven't even reached the halfway mark this pregnancy has already been significantly different from my first. I think the biggest change was the fact that it was a surprise. With Birdie we had been trying for a long time, there was much crying and begging and praying involved, so when we finally got that positive it was a "FINALLY!!" feeling. With this pregnancy, it was pure shock and disbelief from the very first moment. After Birdie, I was fully prepared to have a very difficult time getting pregnant again (part of the reason we were planning on waiting a little bit, I wasn't sure I was ready to get on that roller coaster again) so this baby instantly felt like magic, a miracle. 

Although this baby wasn't in the plans and it has inevitably altered our future we all couldn't help but shake the feeling that this baby was meant to be in our family at this very moment, the timing, though not ours feels more right than anything we could have planned for. One thing that has saddened me is the number or times people ask us something along the lines of "well are you happy?" as if the sole fact that this pregnancy was not planned could possibly mean that this child was not wanted. Because the truth is I wanted this child since I was a little girl, I wanted this family, all of us, all four of us and perhaps one day five or six, for as long as I can remember. So even though I didn't spend my nights collecting tears on my pillow in want of this child and it was instead marvelously bestowed upon us doesn't mean my heart hasn't longed for him or her for years. 

The other slightly unpleasant "side-effect" of this particular pregnancy has been all the anxiety. I don't know what it was with Birdie but I had this extreme degree of blissful ignorance when it came to all things pregnancy and delivery related. I had a feeling that nothing could possibly go wrong, I never questioned the outcome, my health or hers, and just sailed through the pregnancy. This time was so different. From the very beginning I felt so protective over this child, his or her fragility always a sharp reality in my mind. I felt that every new day we were given to continue on this journey was such an unbelievable blessing. At times the fear and questions would overwhelm me and that first prenatal appointment couldn't come soon enough. Papa bear graciously respected my wishes to keep this between us until I could breath a sigh of a relief upon hearing that heartbeat from inside my ever growing belly (which didn't happen until I was 14 weeks!). The waiting for that day was agonizing, for the first time I was frightened over not knowing how this baby was doing. I love that connection that comes later, feeling their every movement, knowing when they like to sleep and on which side and when they're excited or have the hiccups. 

The first trimester was so hard for me and not just because I was physically ill, I was just so worried. It was lonely and scary and just not fun. And although I've gotten my health back and every other the day the baby lets me know how he or she is doing with a little nudge here and there, it does not mean I've come to take this baby for granted. I still feel, very acutely, just what a miracle this life inside me is and I'm so passionate about taking the best care of him or her, and myself for its sake, which, I'll be honest, is not easy with a very active and demanding toddler on the loose.  

I'm interested in seeing how my thoughts and feelings change as this pregnancy progresses but more than anything I just can't wait to meet this little angel already!!