Isn’t it funny how life feels more or less the same from one day to the next, but then you look back a year later and everything has changed?
That’s kind of how I feel when I reread my own reflections from 2024 and 2025. At the start of 2024, I felt like we were finally coming up for air after having three babies in three years, inching our way out of survival mode and towards a new normal with boys ages 1, 2, and 4. By the start of 2025, I felt like a new person, a more capable and confident mother now expecting her fourth baby boy.
And now, looking back one year ago, I cannot believe I was still pregnant and stressing over the unknowns of giving birth, navigating postpartum, and adjusting to life with four children… I just feel profoundly grateful we are where we are today.
Our day-to-day is still chaos to be sure, but we have lots of loving and helpful hands, a child who’s thriving in kindergarten, two more who march into preschool together every morning, and a ten-month-old who pretty much hasn’t stopped smiling since he made his arrival 5 weeks early last February.
When I think about all the things occupying mindshare at the beginning of the year — pregnancy pains, delivery complications, a newborn in the NICU, postpartum mental health, how our first three boys would adjust to a new baby brother they were (for the first time) old enough to really make sense of — I just thank my lucky stars that we’re on the other side of these twelve months with four happy, healthy little boys who keep our days (…nights?) and hearts so full.
My friend Jen has written beautifully about the concept of years that ask and years that answer. After a few very hectic years of finding our footing as new parents, making our house work for us, and stepping into life as a family of three and then four and then five and then six — 2025 was a year that answered.
Not in the sense that we have it all under control or all figured out (with four kids, I doubt we ever will!), but there was a day in the spring when we brought all four boys to Will’s college reunion and felt like, okay, I think we can do this? I was wearing Rory in the baby carrier, holding Teddy’s hand, and Will was pushing Peter and Tucker in a double stroller and I kept thinking, “Look at us! We’re doing it! We’re out and about with four kids and we’re actually enjoying ourselves!”
There were also some very memorable “what were we thinking?!” moments including a truly epic fail of a summer afternoon at the mini golf course (my eye is twitching just thinking about it, ha) but overall it feels like a season where we’re settling into ourselves instead of striving for the next big thing or anxious about what’s ahead and that settling in feels really, really good.
I have lots of hopes and dreams for 2026 (including my next 101 in 1001 list starting later this month!) and it’s been fun to envision all that the next twelve months might have in store. I so appreciate you being here, following along, and navigating your own exciting new chapters alongside mine! I can’t wait to see what 2026 will bring and wish each of you the very best in the year ahead.
And before you go, a few memories and blog posts that encapsulate the year that was!
August + September
