Tomorrow is my birthday.

Birthdays seem like a time when people confront their own mortality. I’ve had entirely too many opportunities to do this in the last year. I’m currently a week into wearing a monitor that will hopefully help us figure out what’s happening with my heart and/or pacemaker. Current best theories involve some combination of hormones, breastfeeding, exercise, and/or just no longer being pregnant bringing my heart rate below the threshold they observed nearly a year ago. I feel a little like a cyborg. The baby finds it extremely interesting.

On the eve of my birthday, I like to reflect and set goals for the next year, if I haven’t done so already. Next year I’ll be 40. I’ve made myself an ambitious, mostly fun list. I’m trying to be intentional. Mostly I’m tired.

I’m tired because the baby has me up throughout the night, and when I try to relax into sleep, I often get paced. I’m tired because there aren’t enough hours between 4:45/5, when I get home from work, and 6/6:30, when the kids go to sleep – not enough time for snuggles and play, for making and eating and cleaning up dinner, for putting the milk in the fridge before the baby wants to nurse, for taking off my boots before the big kid wants to play a game of his making, for addressing these needs before kissing my husband. I’m tired because the cat needs to go to the vet, and the bottles need to be washed. I’m tired because I don’t know what I’m doing, but I wake up too early each morning to keep doing it.

And then on my walk to work, an orange rose in the snow – tired, but beautiful: