Pause

This blog started out as a photo dump for far-away grandparents and a way to keep in touch with friends, to highlight all the good and pretty stuff that makes up the Burt life. And at times, it's been a way to be more honest than I can be in person (much more articulate on paper, I am) — a way to put it all out there without really putting it all out there. In this, I am every once in a while surprised to hear from someone unexpected with a quick note to let me know that someone, somewhere, gets it. And that's been nice. Especially now. Because right now, try as I might, this Burt's life is not feeling so good and so pretty.

Except when it is.

But the thing is, I don't know how to go from a post about the babies I wanted so badly to a post about how my two-year-old wants nothing to do with pants now that she has new, "big girl" Rapunzel underwear, which she accessorizes with nothing but ruby slippers.

Both hold a whole lot of space in my heart, but the transition from tragedy to humdrum, from heartache to joy, feels strange and impossible and surreal no matter which camp I find myself in at any moment.

our first baby splurge after finding out our twins were two little boys

And so I sit and I wait and I don't really do much of anything because everything feels either too normal and happy for someone who is sad, or too sad and unfaithful for someone who has a whole lot of goodness surrounding her.

I want everything to stop, to give me a minute to figure things out at some undetermined time in the future when things like this are to be figured out.

But instead, everything goes on. And though that is probably good and necessary, it just feels so darn unfair to the baby boy-filled life I had a thousand times imagined my own. Like I'm betraying my boys by looking ahead to a life that does not have them in it.

I was going to be pregnant with twins for Halloween, and I was going to eat every Tootsie Roll and Mr. Goodbar in sight without an ounce of guilt, and we were going to find two tiny pumpkins at the pumpkin patch for the twin brothers who would soon join the chaos. Instead, I made my mom make my kids' costumes while I cried in my room; I have honestly considered the dentist's offer to trade candy for cash; and I bought enough pumpkins to line our entire walkway just because I couldn't bear to only see four pumpkins alone on our stoop.

Can I please hit the pause button?

Because the costumes are cute, and I really want to enjoy my kids running around in them without feeling guilty. And the candy is as sugary as ever, but I'd like to eat it without thinking about the pregnancy weight I have no reason to hang onto. And the pumpkin-lined pathway brings a smile to my face every time I look out the window, but then I remember the two tiny pumpkins I'd rather have in its place.

And so I sit. And I wait. And I try to have faith that normal will again feel normal one day.