12/17

Four.

I'm sitting here on the [Christmas] eve of your fourth birthday thinking about how much my life has changed since I had you. I was happy before, and inspired, and hopeful for the future but I was also a little.. stuck. I was so very grateful for my life, I'd been through good and bad, as we all have, but everything felt stunted.

Do you know how I knew I wanted you? A pregnancy scare that all of a sudden, didn't feel particularly scary. In fact, that single line left me with a heavy heart, like I'd already imagined running my fingers across your teeny toes and stroking the pink of your cheeks before you'd ever even existed.

Soon after, one line became two and even though you were so very wanted, I was terrified to meet you. I was worried I would fail you, because to be blessed with something so precious meant I had to prove that I deserved it, that I was worthy of being the Mother to someone so worthy of my mothering.

Then, quick as a flash it seemed, you were here, and I discovered this whole other life I'd never been privy to before, uncovered passions I never knew I had. It's all thanks to you that Hello Archie was born, something that I love, that I've built up from nowhere and that holds so many of our stories thus far.

The joy I get from photography, capturing you and your brother, our everyday, and sharing it with a community I never knew existed, a community holding friends I never would've found. You taught me to be brave, to take chances, to be better. It's been hard, there's no denying it, but I am a different person now to the sobbing mess clutching a negative pregnancy test, wishing it could be different. Now it is different and I am happier than I have ever been.

You are the wild one; confident, clever and loving, and now you are four! Happy Birthday to you, the one who made me this Mother.