We just started the third trimester of this crazy journey called pregnancy, and I feel like someone has pressed the fast forward button. After days and days of thinking and feeling like 9 months would take forever, now it seems like the days are speeding by so quickly.
Of course getting back into the school routine with our oldest two has impacted that feeling. The slow summer saunter that invited us to linger not worrying so much about bedtimes or schedules has transitioned into fall’s fast pace that means we go back to our weekend schedule of seeing our girls, which never feels long enough.
As Baby H’s closet gets filled with clothes, I wonder how these half-siblings (it took us awhile to figure out that they will indeed be half-siblings and not step-siblings!) are going to interact together and how our family will transform with his arrival. Blending two families is never easy, but we know how important it is for them to know each other and spend time with each other, even if it’s just for weekends during the school year.
I’ve always heard of families like ours described as blended families, but I think a better description is blending families because our girls are constantly changing as are we and for us to be a family means spending time talking about those changes and working through those changes. Some changes came pretty easily, like the addition of MH’s new bed. Some changes came hard, like our move to Columbia. For kids who have to deal with changing houses, changing parents, changing households, every change makes a bigger impact, every change makes us cognizant of just how much we are asking of them.
Yes, there are things and events we miss in our girls lives and there are things they will miss in their half-brother’s life, but there’s still no doubt that we are family.