hindsight is 20/20

2012. The year after the big year, the one where we quit our jobs and moved to a different state for new ones, got pregnant, started fresh. Separate from our support systems and from much of what we’d known, the year we learned to rely on each other completely. The year the mister and I truly, truly became best friends. A lot happens in one spin around the sun.

It was the year where we were forced to admit to ourselves that Kid A’s struggles might have a name, and that name might be a diagnosis. He is brilliant (pretty much literally) and loving and caring and curious and loves comic books and his brothers more than just about anything. He has Asperger’s. And while we are still trying to figure out the ways his mind works, and how to give him the skills he needs to survive childhood and adolescence and thrive and grow into the man I know he will be, we will get there. This was the year we started trying.

It was the year Kid B turned three. For my money in the early developmental stages, three is the worst. It’s like you have this mini-teenager in the house, learning how to assert their independence, moody and temperamental. And for all that, despite not being my snuggler he is the one who in the morning is the emo-est kid in the history of emo if he doesn’t get to tuck in with me with milk and cartoons. He loves books and trains and dinosaurs and his brothers.

And then there is Kid C, the youngest, my baby. 2012 was the year of his birth, and afforded me the scariest moments of my life thus far. From the get-go he was set to make sure he was the last, the kid who turned cartwheels daily in utero and was breach until the last possible moment. I will never, ever forget what it felt like to hold this perfect baby in my arms and then, a week later at our first peds appointment, be told that he’d popped a flag on the newborn screen. Kid C carried at least one mutation for cystic fibrosis. Weeks of uncertainty (you can search the blog for the CRMS tag for the full story) and nine months later and we still don’t really know what lies ahead, but we’ve had a really healthy baby for those nine months and will just keep moving forward with that as our reality. He’s the best baby, all smiles and learning to walk and trying desperately to do everything that his brothers do already. Boy, am I in trouble there.

It was a year of searching, professionally, spiritually, and I don’t expect that to change much moving forward. It’s just how I’m wired, restless and ready and always looking for what’s next. Jury’s still out on whether it’s a desirable trait or a character flaw.

It was a year, it was a year with more good than bad, more promise than pain, more hope than misery and I guess when you do your accounting that’s what really matters, in the end. So so long, 2012, the year my family became complete. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring, but I’m ready for 2013.