Journal Vol. 1: Winter mornings & reheated coffee.

Between loads of laundry and wondering if I'm doing this right...

Four months.

It feels impossible to have known him for only four months when I feel like I've lived a thousand versions of myself since the day he arrived. People ask me how old he is now and I answer without a pause... four... months...

Then for a split second, I mentally start counting the weeks instead as they creep closer to five months. I count the speech and paediatric appointments. Count the nights I sat at the hospital for him, or the days our dog spent in the ICU. The hours spent attached to a breast pump while the rest of the house sleeps. Suddenly I find myself measuring time differently.

Everything has gone by both painfully slow and yet furiously fast. A lot has happened. It feels rare to come up for air, however, today was wonderfully ordinary - and we needed that.

The washing machine sang its delightful little tune hours ago and the throws still await their turn in the dryer. The fridge door was opened three times before I remembered I wanted milk for my coffee. The dogs followed us from room to room as if they were our personal security. He smiled at the cushion on the couch as if it told the most hilarious joke.

I caught myself wondering if I would remember these tiny things.

Not the milestones everyone writes in books, that I always manage to forget to note anyway.

But the ordinary Friday things.

The way he smiles beneath his dummy in his sleep or the way he curls his hand around my fingers.

How he opens his eyes the exact moment I lay him in bed and smiles as if it was a prank all along.

The throaty laugh when he is thrown in the air or the way he blows spit bubbles with the fleeting phases of his language development.

I hope I remember these moments.

I've realised motherhood isn't just a series of grand moments that can be captured by a lens, but instead many tiny moments stitched together so closely that they almost disappear if you aren't paying attention.

Perhaps that's why I've decided to write... not because our story is extraordinary - but because it isn't.

Because one day I'll forget that the couch became home to muslin wraps, dog toys and bibs all at the same time. I'll forget the rush of the cold winter morning as I let the dogs out after heating the house all night. I'll forget how quickly four became five and five became six...

I'm not writing to stop time or to capture it in a bottle but rather to give it somewhere to rest - to take pause. Like a bookmark in a novel.

We're quietly planning our next adventures. Suitcases aren't open yet but they are already taking up space in my mind. I find myself wondering if motherhood will always be this strange balancing act between quietly staying in place exactly as things are and wanting to show him the world.

Maybe both can exist together. Maybe that's the point.

For now though, the sterilizer is humming, he is finally asleep albeit on my lap and the house is wrapped in this sense of calm that comes only after a very full day.

The washing can wait until tomorrow. So can almost everything else.

Tonight, I'd rather embrace the extraordinarily ordinary day with my family.

Until the next page, Jade.