It’s hard to believe that I’m back home from visiting the Halters. Sometimes when I’m in Nashville I actually forget that there is a world outside of what I’m currently experiencing. It’s like I get so caught up in the right here, right now… that I forget there’s anything else. I’m super okay with that.
These two little girls won’t ever know how much I love them. I keep trying to tell them. I tell them they’re the silliest, cutest, funniest, most wonderful Lucy and Layla that I have ever met in my entire life… but they don’t get it. There’s a Ben Rector song that sums it up perfectly:
When I’m with you, I’m no longer wandering.
When I’m with you, I can finally breathe.
When I’m with you, I know who I am and who I want to be.
- Lucy & Layla
- Layla & I
- Layla’s drawing of us. We’re walking and holding our purses.
It’s so strange to think that Lucy used to want to have nothing to do with me, and for awhile I was really nervous about picking them up or anything. Now there’s a lot of hugging and cuddling and dancing and throwing in the air and running start hugs and hand holding.
- my drawings of the girls & I. #skills
- Lucy and I watching Cinderella
- #icanteven
There’s a surface selfishness that comes with loving children. They’re pretty trusting and so open to love and it feels freaking great to have one of them crawl up on the couch next to you and wrap their tiny body around your arm or put their heads on your shoulder. When they say things like “my toenails love you, Stephnee” it’s so hard not to fall on the floor and roll around with heart-constipation.
But then there are moments when you say “LAYLA PLEASE SIT DOWN,” very firmly as she is stretched from table to chair and the chair is sliding back and all you can think of is her bashing her head on the table or floor and she runs away crying because you hurt her feelings. Or Lucy, who gets hurt feelings because she asked you to tickle her and you did and she can’t remember why that hurt her feelings but it did. and in those moments I realize the weight of their little love, the responsibility that comes in those moments and the urgency to kneel down and hold them close and reassure them of my love.
Today the girls said I could tell everyone that they are my best friends. So there you have it. My teeny tiny best friends.
I probably should have named this post “#icanteven” because… well, I can’t even. How could anyone?
