I found this old picture of Pea and me on my computer this morning. I don’t really remember it being taken, can’t even really say how old she was in it. Somewhere around two months, I’m guessing? I like it. A lot. Once I get past Pea not looking anything like the butter-ball in this picture, I see a mama who is madly in love with her little girl. It’s so funny when I think back to her first 6 or so months as a part of our family. It’s all a blur and yet there’s also so much detail. How that’s possible, I don’t know. I especially like the way that I look in this picture. I look happy and content and calm. The calm before the storm, perhaps?

What I would have done without the internet during the early months, I’ll never know. We were in a new city, I had no friends to speak of who I could call and ask about parenthood. My mother was one thousand miles away. I was so alone and with my husband traveling a lot, I always seemed a little out of sorts. I think on the surface, I always looked like I had it together. Much like in this picture. Take note of my hair: perfect color, perfect blow-out. Note also the lovely and natural make-up and the clear eyes. Not bad, I think. Ha. I now can admit that I was trying so hard to look presentable, like I had this motherhood thing down to a perfect science. And yet, by 5:00 in the evening, I was bouncing up and down on a medicine ball with Pea on my lap, searching the internet for help on any and everything: how to make her stop crying, how to help her learn to crawl, all the while with Donovan’s “Catch the Wind” playing on repeat because for some reason, my little Pea liked the romantic and folksy sound of the classic 60′s troubadours.

We made it through the first year. Through the constant crying, the refusal to nap in anything but the swing set up in a dark bathroom with the radio playing static, the first fall out of the swing when I wondered if I should take her to the ER just because, the sitting up, the crawling, the walking, the first swim class and ultimately her first birthday celebration. And now, having been through it all, I’m feeling pretty confident with Coco, that I know what I’m doing this time around. It’s not a mystery. I don’t need all of the parenting books that I collected with Pea. I don’t need the internet as much. When I’m on it now, I’m reading blogs written by other moms and laughing at the stories, and relating to the stories. I’m not so frantically wondering if there’s another first-time mother out there, at three in the morning with a baby nursing at her breast, who is as lonely and confused as I was at times.

The time between Pea’s first birthday and her second was pretty glorious. I was deliriously pregnant with Coco and we moved into a beautiful new home and my husband’s business, in it’s infancy at the time, was taking off with a bang. Pea was really coming into her own, a strong-willed little person with lots of passion and curiosity who thrived on excitement. And then Coco came along, and once again, there was a transitional period of getting to know ourselves as a family of four. I walked around in a daze those first few weeks, crying off and on, wondering at times what the hell I was thinking – how could I handle two kids so close in age, and at other times wondering how it was that I got to be so lucky as to have these amazing little girls.

Then, Pea turned two. And I am lost, once again. These last couple of weeks have been really tough. She’s in the throes of the “no!” phase, and I’m just wondering, once again, what the hell I was thinking? Can I handle this? It’s not feeling like it. It’s like living life from moment to moment when one moment, I’m in awe of this little person who is so cool and smart and funny and then in the next moment is this holy terror, screaming “no, mommy!” and running away from me.

Ugh.

When does this end? At three? Or at eighteen, when she presumably leaves our home for the greener pastures of college?

I know, deep down, we’ll get through it. But right now? As I hide up here in my loft, sitting at my computer? I’m going to surf the magical internet for other women out there who are going through exactly what I am right now. Because it helps. It helps so much to not feel so alone in this moment. And so, thank you, oh wise universe, for bringing us the internet…