I am not versed in numerology. But this seems like a pretty auspicious date, wouldn’t you say? This is the day I found out our family of 4 was going to be expanding to welcome one more. That little lady is going to be eight years old already tomorrow. And I am reflecting on the circumstances that surrounded this stunning news.

My two older children were eight and ten years old at the time she was born. I was inches from heading into a new decade. Things were kind of on auto pilot and we were in a groove.

I now laugh at how anxious I was to go back and do it all over again. I remember lamenting to my husband “I don’t want to be friends with the 27 year olds!” I am one of the older Moms. I have a recent high school graduate and an incoming Junior who just got her driver’s license. My husband will be Medicare-eligible by the time she graduates from High School…and I’ll be nipping at his heels. But how many times in the last nine years have I heard “She will keep you young!”? Too many to count.

Her arrival expanded my heart, opened my world wider, humbled me and allowed me to become more mindful and more of who I was meant to be.

There is a path you are on and you get comfortable there. In my experience, comfortable is never a place I can nor desire to stay very long. And the arrival of my youngest put me so far out of my comfort zone and yet so comfortably in a space I needed to be in.

Time slowed. For the first time I felt like I knew what the word wisdom meant. And the four of us could not remember what life had been like before she came along. And we didn’t want to.

Too soon for my comprehension our family will be forever changing as we launch our son to his next adventure of college. All too soon thereafter our daughter will be following suit. And then there will be three. She will help us hang on to the identity that we have lived and breathed as parents for so many years. And help us to stay connected to her youthfulness and spunk. Life sure got more interesting eight years ago. And I am forever grateful for the curve in the road she brought.

© Jennifer Scheidt and Titanimom, 2020. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Jennifer Scheidt and Titanimom with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.