To my babies, on their birthdays.

Today is the day that you were born, and it was one of the best days of my life, even though I didn't know it at the time. I don't remember what I was doing on this day years ago. To be honest, it's hard to imagine myself doing anything in a life without the two of you. It's hard to imagine that years went by and I lived my life and you lived your lives and we weren't living them together. I used to think about your birthdays as something that was removed from, something that had nothing to do with me. Another mother carried you, another mother gave birth to you, another mother held you for the first time and picked out your names. Another mother spent those precious first minutes, hours, days, months, years with you. I would imagine what you were like when you were tiny, swaddled up in a blanket, and be sad that I missed it. I would think about your first tooth that grew in without me there to see it, or your first wobbly steps that happened without me there to catch you when you fell. I missed a lot of firsts in your lives, and that used to give me this incredible ache in my heart. And then one day, Scout, you drew a picture of our family. Daddy was there and I was too, and even our little fuzzball Winston, but you and Sunny were standing apart from us. When I asked you why you didn't draw us together, you told me, matter of factly, that this was a picture from the time that we were waiting for each other, before you were on Earth. And when I started to cry, I don't think you understood quite why, but you knew it was a happy cry, not a sad one. We have always been waiting for you. Those days and months and years that I wasn't there to see you and hug you and watch you guys grow, I was waiting for you. Those times where life was tough and it wasn't easy for you to go through, I was waiting for you both. Every time you looked up and said good night to the moon and the stars, those were the same moon and stars that Daddy and I looked up at each night, waiting for you. Today I also think about the woman who brought you into the world, your birth mother, I know she is thinking about you too. It hasn't always been easy for me to think about her, and it hasn't been easy for me to forgive her for how your early years turned out. But today of all days, I put that aside, and I send a silent thanks through the universe for her. There are so many things about the world that I just don't know. I don't know why we had to wait for each other for so long, or why bad things had to happen for you to come into our lives. I wish every day that your lives could have been beautiful and carefree from the moment you were born. But you know what I do know? I know that on February 16, 2008 and February 5, 2009, our lives changed forever. I know that at the very second you were born, I felt it in my heart. Something stirred, something opened up, something changed. I often wonder what I was doing at that very second. Did my breath catch? Did my arms get warm with phantom hugs? Did I stop what I was doing just in time to catch a glimpse of the sun breaking through the winter sky? I couldn't have know what it was at the time, but something was there. I am sure of it. I used to feel like Daddy and I became parents on the first day I saw the two of you run up my driveway. But the truth is, my beautiful children, that we became parents on those days, five and six years years ago, that you took your first breaths. And we have always been right here, waiting for you.