just before.

the first day of the year was many days in one, but mostly it was a day we spent together: papa working in the kitchen (filling bowls with chili to warm our bellies and our freezer with extras to pull out in deep winter months when we're too taken with a tiny dove to think ahead to supper), mama writing in journals and nesting in baby's room (sorting clothing and folding blankets and spinning a mobile of swans and admiring things soft and delicate, things that will make baby's childhood magical, a world all her or his own).

this new year began with a thankful heart:

thank you for this baby growing healthy and spirited, and for my strong, capable body. thank you for another year of loving my christopher and our people. thank you for days ahead — days at home, raising this baby, going through the good and the hard, with a tribe only a text or call away. thank you for the rocking chair in the corner that makes me smile. thank you for the pure, selfess love of a husband who does our laundry so i can rest and does our cooking so i can write — who gives of himself so fully, that i might spend time with my thoughts and this nine month belly, before all that comes next.

and this new year began with a humble plea:

please deliver this baby safely to our arms. please bring my christopher safely home to us every day. please keep our dear ones healthy and safe. please let me be and give the best of myself, most especially to my two and the four walls of our home. 

and so i greet this new year, these waiting days, with eyes turned heavenward and palms turned up. this is a month for rest. i will sip fizzy martinelli's and spend time with baby's journal. i will write love letters to my husband and thank you notes to family and friends. i will wash baby's clothing and pack our hospital bag. i will take long walks, stretching my legs and my back, preparing for the journey ahead. i will assemble playlists, spangled with peter broderick and ólafur arnalds, for cozy winter days ahead. i will diffuse essential tree oils into the air we breathe and fill our freezer with bone broth. i will read books that fill my cup and nap when i am able and relax into steamy baths at the end of cold days. i will continue spinning music (bach, mozart, romantic cello and violin) and reading aloud (frost, eliot, woolf, stevens), in earnest hopes that our home feels familiar to baby from the very day he or she joins us here.

this month is a living prayer. this month is the very thing i need.