new year, new world

To celebrate the new year I'm going to attach an email I recently found. It was written (by me) to some mom girlfriends on Dec 31, 2006 and is rather interesting to read here a full year later. I think it is telling of what this last year has been for me. It doesn't seem that long ago in time, but it does feel like I've traveled a great distance from this:

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Well, ladies, we've just put Miss F down in her own room for the first time. I'm ambivalent about it—she's growing up already!! How does one deal with such enormous mundane everyday dramas? And I'm going back to work on Wednesday. Another thing I feel absolutely ambivalent about. I feel like I'm going to miss her so much, but I know in my head (in my head, not my gut) that it will be good for her, good for me, good for Mitch, good all the way around. I find these days I have this strange reaction to other people's holding her—it's a sort of mix of jealousy and missing holding her myself, nothing as completely formed as either, just an odd longing that I feel is absolutely instinct, the mother instinct I've heard about but didn't understand. Ah, a strange new world it is.

I know A already has the book, but the rest of you should read _Whole Child, Whole Parent_. It's not a parenting guide like we're used to, more of a spiritual book, the spiritual awakening that is having a child. It's rather amazing.

It's the last day of 2006, the year in which our babes were born. I'm not really feeling as sappy as I sound. I want to get together soon, with all of our little ones in the same room. They've been in the same room before, but then they were on the inside of our bodies. We weren't able to hold any of them but our own. I wonder if any of us will be awake to see the new year? Probably only if we're up nursing. :)