A New Season.

I know it's been a long while.

And, there's plenty of catching up to do.

But tonight, I sit perplexed by the fact that next week is April.  In my mind, Christmas was just last week.  Right?

I know I'm wrong.  I know the calendar will flip, and March will tiptoe quietly out of 2014, waving goodbye in a swirl of snow and sunshine.  Maybe not snow.  Sunshine would be better.  You just can't trust that Polar Vortex, though.

Something about the changing season makes me a little emotional.  A lot emotional, actually.

Maybe it's those dang pseudo-pregnancy hormones, escaping at last, after festering in the interim of hospital life as I awaited the day I would actually bring my baby home.  There's been plenty of tears, cried in joy and in pain, but the tears I feel tonight don't belong to either of those emotions.

Transition Tears, maybe?  The kind of tears you cry when your life is at the crux of Old Life and New Life.  Bidding farewell to what you've known and what you've become comfortable with, in exchange for something new and undiscovered.  Uncharted territory.

In our case, it's living our life with a medically fragile child.  Tubes and pumps and IVs and doctors appointments.  Leaving the confines of the safe hospital where our people are.  Our People being the medical staff that we've come to know, love, and trust with our daughter over the past five months.

FIVE MONTHS.

Which brings me back to the calendar and seasons changing and my Transitional Tears.

We made the ultimate transition just today - bringing our daughter home.

Tonight, she is asleep in the pack-n-play right next to me.  It will be the first night she's actually slept, peacefully in her home, uninterrupted every four hours by hospital staff checking vitals, refilling her feeds, clearing her pumps.  That's not to say that tonight will be restful.  For any of us.

There's the churn of her feeding pump.  (Doesn't bother her, kind of annoying to me.)  Rainwater flowing on the noisemaker.  (I figure that silence would be too drastic a change from her busy hospital room.)  The beep of her pump at four hour intervals asking for a refill.  (Just like getting up with any other newborn, right?)

I remember those early days with Beckham, waking every three hours to nurse, feeling like morning was days away.  Turning on the TV just to have the company of whatever random salesperson happened to be on an infomercial, pitching something I could own in three easy payments of $39.99.

There were Transitional Tears then, too.  So, I feel a little bit more normal knowing that feeling abnormal is completely normal during a time of transition.

A new season.  A new normal.

Here we go...