The Kid will be three months old tomorrow.

Thank God.

We were told that six weeks and three months are benchmarks, that joy and order arrive with them. But all that arrived with six weeks was a growth spurt and increased fussiness, and the light at the end of the tunnel grew dim. But three months? Well, thank you for being right. Because three months, in comparison, feels a little like heaven.

A heaven without sleeping in until 10 am on Saturdays, but still.

The light grew brighter a few weeks ago, when I realized that TK no longer resembled a generic newborn alien but was developing features and expressions with context and personality. The smiles finally arrived, like spring after a long winter, and he was holding his head up a little. His sleeping through the night endured, and his naptime grew more organized. I could meet The Husband at the door like I did during our honeymoon-newlywed days with a smile on my face and cookies on the counter rather than with a screaming baby and threats of leaving.

And there was, of course, the magical Bob.

When TK and I go on our walks, I’m pushing at least twenty pounds around, often uphill. And I can’t tell you how much I prefer it to carrying around that kind of weight while pregnant. He alternately sleeps and observes, and I alternately blare music through my headphones and take them off to talk to him.

We’re becoming friends. I’m waving the white flag. He has conquered us–in the best possible way.

I think back over the predictions and plans I made, the proclamations stemming from an over-read, objective mind: the vow that I would never be one of those people who over-posted on Facebook; that the routine would be iron-clad; that babies just cry and I would not let it wear me down.

A funny thing happened on the way home from the hospital: objectivism, the little traitor, abandoned me.

How was I supposed to know how his cry would puncture my heart and sanity? How could I have predicted the double-sided nature of flexibility? And just how might I have guessed that this little thing would be so cute that to not post pictures on Facebook would be to deprive the world of greatness?

A friend emailed me this week with stories of her own newborn, and we did the thing that saves new moms’ lives: we commiserated. I learned that I was not the only one to issue middle-of-the-night threats of suicide that would be deeply and red-facedly regretted the next morning. I learned that I was not alone. But then, I learn that a lot. I just keep forgetting it.

Yesterday TK and I headed home through a playground area and I spotted a chalk-drawn hopscotch board. I remembered the mom who, during last week’s tornadoes, lost a foot and half a leg by covering her children with her body. The kids escaped without a scratch. I remembered this, and I considered the days behind us, of exhaustion and insanity and rampant complaints. I know there will always be difficult times, and to that end, you will find them recorded here. But as I pushed my ever-growing, yet ever-lightening load past a relic from my own childhood that I’ll one day share with TK, I could only give thanks that our own storms thus far have been so wonderfully small yet full of grace; how we have been covered and kept and unscathed through them all.