I don’t know who told me that seven is a magic number, but here I am pulled to the keyboard on this laptop from my couch with my feet up claiming “SEVEN!” Seven.

I woke up this morning with a cough and a sore throat and had to reschedule clients for the day. Granted there were only 3 between 1p-5p, but nonetheless I don’t want to cough or breath over peoples faces and bodies when I’m coughing. So I dropped them off and came back home.

Who’s them?

Sourdough and Rye Bread. Twins. My twins. Babies I’ve had, that are now 7. Seven. Seven years of laughing, crying, swearing… With their brother, the Little Muffin, we had been changing diapers for almost 6 years. Diapers are expensive, and now that we don’t buy them we didn’t magically find extra money with which to splurge each time a paycheck gets deposited. We’ve just already spent it and not budgeted for diapers.

They are seven and while all will tell you it goes by quickly, I felt it. I felt the time ticking slowly every time one of them couldn’t sleep or was sick or there was more cleaning or more laundry or too many toys to pick up after tripping over them constantly. I felt the time ticking slowly when we were potty training or dealing with teeth coming in. Then it did speed up a bit. They were walking and telling stories, coloring, doing projects at daycare. Then they had full size backpacks that hung over 3/4 of their bodies and they were walking into school.

Then there’s behavioral issues, and outbursts and impulses. There’s doctor conversations, school staff conversations, dance lessons, soccer practice and the 100th viewing of Encanto or Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. There’s work, and new clients, and building a business, and bills and operating expenses, and trips to plan and payfor and teeth falling out with those adult teeth coming in.

There’s always something.

And there’s been plenty of times I wondered where I’d be if I was just that single girl in NYC that didn’t come home get married and have babies, I wonder what I’d be eating and where I’d be drinking and what show I was going to see. It’s nice, it’s not awful, what I imagine.

But I see what I’d be missing out on. I see, and feel, where my heart skips and flutters. I feel anger more now ha! I feel happiness more now. I feel frustration at a higher capacity, then these little people I’m helping learn to be bigger people ask me if I want to take a breath. Because that’s what my husband and I teach them. Taking a breath, calm the body, be able to handle what’s going on. It’s ok to have big feelings, and even adults need reminders that those feelings have to be processed and you can’t process if you can’t breathe. I feel impatience. A lot. I feel it A LOT. I also feel seen in a way I can’t explain. Having those baby eyes look at me with love or hope or to tell me the joke they just wrote. Or see their faces light up by something small – because to them it isn’t small, it’s all big and fun and exciting. I’m so tired. I’m drained most of the time. I have to do better. I have to find a way to do better. Make my body function better so I can do better and be better for them. sure, sure for me too. But still.

Seven years is long, and also not long at all, to have all the feelings you never thought you’d have because you chose not to – then changed your mind. I sleep best cuddling with one of my babies, I also haven’t slept in seven years it seems.

Happy birthday to The Bread. I hope I purge my brain here more often in the coming years.