the truth about becoming three.

i have been wanting to write this post for awhile but haven't quite had the words or the time. but here i am, hands on keys, making myself write. herewego...

let's go back to that first week in december when we suddenly had our sweet baby in the house. as much as i loved the idea of our new family of three, i was subconsciously avoiding it entirely. i remember panicking that if we couldn't get her down, we'd never have time "us two." i would get anxious as it got dark thinking, "but this is adam and me time." i wanted "family time" to end and our old life to resume each evening. i remember the day that God convicted me of this. convicted me of being selfish and holding on to something good and refusing His something better. i remember Him saying to me, "elise, it's not just you and adam now. now you are becoming three. embrace this and you will find joy." it was so obvious. but so hard. "becoming one" when we got married was easy peasy compared to this.

that night there was a duke game and we were all cuddled up on the couch watching it on my computer. florence was still at that (brief) stage where all she wanted to do was snuggle all the time. and i had her in my arms, adam next to me, and duke playing basketball. i thought, "oooooh, yeah, of course! we are three now. and here we are watching duke as a family of three." and you know what, i was overflowing in that moment. looking from her to adam to jabari parker dunking...it was so much better than before. and i was so glad it wasn't just adam and me watching that game. we were indoctrinating the littlest nelson. and i was embracing it fully. so was she.

so fast forward 3 months: three nights ago we officially dropped florence's "dream feed." this was when we'd go get her around 10:30 pm and give her a bottle in her sleep to kind of fill-er-up, if you will, so she'd sleep the rest of the night. adam always fed her while i sat next to him, kissing her sleeping face over and over. but she was hardly eating anything at it anymore, so we dropped it.

again, i had this moment after that first night where i thought, "amazing! now we are off duty when we put her down at 7:30. we can go to bed as early as we want! we can have lots of mamma-papa time. like old times again!"

now fast forward again to last night when this convo happened:

a: "is her bottle ready?"
e: "but, we aren't giving her this feed, remember."
a: (looking sad) "oh...yeah."
e: "we can probably still just go hold her in her sleep. she's sooo cuddly when she's sleeping."
a: grins and nods.

so, we snuck right up stairs and just stared at our baby girl sleep when we could have been having that "just us" time that i so badly thought i wanted. while we were standing in her dark nursery we smiled at each other. and hugged each other. and exchanged "i love yous" with each other. and we kissed her cheeks. and we kissed each other. and we realized that being three was the very best thing we could be.

photos by the arrow house. more from this shoot.