Because it would feel disingenuous to announce the birth of a new baby without acknowledging the real hardness of this life even in its deep goodness, every new baby post comes with an avoidance of the saccharine and a nod to all the internal wrestling it involves. Maybe I have a knee-jerk reaction to the demographic who, in an effort to defend large families from their (many) dissidents, merely become image-mongers pretending at perfection. It's hard. BUT. If I had time to blog on the regular--blog everything--I wouldn't even need to use words to defend this life (I have no interest in engaging in that debate anyway). But the pictures would speak for themselves. The children would speak for themselves. It is so hard to look back at all the photos of the children in my camera roll and only put up the baby pictures; to watch the videos from a few years ago and feel the exquisite heartbreak of time; to wish again and again that I could capture each delightful iteration of each child--their brightness and their quirks, the way they grin, the curls I had to cut off, the stories they tell and the little-kid voices they'll grow out of too fast, the adventures they have and the dreams that are growing inside them.
I'm grateful bone-deep for the gift of these humans and this life mothering them. God fashioned each one of them, and it is a wondrous thing.
And I feel positively gleeful sometimes thinking about how fun it will be learning who Verity is. What delight!
This second month held another cold. Her first wedding. Her first funeral. Lots of sunshiney smiles to make up for her miserliness in her first month. Cooing. Loving. Not enough sleep. The doting of her siblings.
It is so good to have you with us, beautiful baby.
