When do you become a mother? Is it when you get pregnant? Is it when they hand you the baby in the hospital? I have to say, it wasn't until very recently that I have felt like one. Perhaps this is strange or maybe for me it is just right. In some ways, I didn't start feeling like a mommy until the girls started identifying me as such. When we first brought the girls home, I never really felt like a mom. I felt more like a solider in a war or a prisoner in someone else's life. This sounds negative, but it really isn't. I didn't think of it negatively at the time. It just was what it was. It was hard and I had to deal. I was fat and had a big hole cut in my tummy and never got to sleep and then I was supposed to bond with babies!

Everyone always said it would get better. 3 months, 6 months, 1 year. It gets better, they tell you on the street. It gets better, they tell you in the store. It gets easier, they email you. But every time I thought it would get better, what really happened was I got used to it.

But here we are, 10 months old. And it is getting better. It is getting easier. I am starting to finally feel like a mommy. And it isn't anything that I am doing. It is all Rachel and Anya's fault. All of a sudden, both girls are reaching for me when they are upset, saying mum mum mum when they want to talk and generally seeking me out for comfort. It can be a little overwhelming when they both do it at the same time, but I open my arms wide and they both fall on top of me and we are a pile of puppies.

With this new mommy reality is coming something that I didn't think I would feel. A yearning to be home with them. I sit here wondering what they are doing, if they are happy, if they are being nice to each other. I sit here thinking about this all day long. And I am thinking of friends who say they don't want kids. And I am thinking of the former me who didn't really care deeply either way. And I am thinking of the me who saw two beans on a first sonogram and cried in fear of the future and wondered if I had enough love to give two new people. And the reality is that you don't really want kids until you have them. At least this is true for me. I didn't know the full extent of my love for my children until just this week. Suddenly they are people and not just babies and I can't believe I ever ever ever thought about not having kids. I have just been through the craziest war of twin infanthood and I wouldn't go back and change a minute of it.

All of that said, I am still not at all fond of babies. I love that my girls are moving away from babyhood. I think this is part of my wanting to be with them more. My role in their current growth just seems so much more important than it did 4 months ago. Plus they are talking and making decisions and beginning to feed themselves! I have children now! Not babies, but children! And Anya gets so jealous and can say FiSH and Rachi is so calculating and knows exactly what she wants and uses her stuffed monkey for a pillow. Children!

This picture was taken of us three weeks ago, we have changed so much since then:

Rachie, mommy, Anya.