very emotional

I know I haven't posted for awhile.  It's just that their approaching birthday is so....intense.  Intense with every emotion.  My heart is full.  More full than I could ever have imagined.  Yet I can not deny that this past year has been hard.  Very hard.  Before the babies came, mothers of twins would give me advice.  Unprompted, of course.  And the consensus seemed to be survival.  If you can survive the first year with twins, then you can survive anything.  So many mothers would tell me that the first year was a blur.  That they were too tired, too stressed, too busy to simply enjoy the moment.  I swore that wouldn't happen.  To me, to the babies, to our family. Yet I have to be honest, the first four months were rough.  As I look back on pictures, capturing the moments of their infancy, I do wonder how I survived.  How our marriage survived.   Aside from the lack of sleep, we were constantly worried about Blake.  He was spitting constantly.  He was developmentally delayed.  He didn't respond well to sound...not even his momma's voice.  And poor Beckett, he got whatever attention was left after me devoting all my energy to Blake.  Our marriage received no attention, and began to fray at the edges.  We were two people living together for the same purpose, the same goal yet we couldn't have been farther apart.  So we went to counseling.  And implemented "date night."  And slowly we started to walk not only in the same direction, but side by side once again.  Then Blake started therapy and I realized that just maybe things were going to be okay.  I started to relax.  To soak up their babyhood like it was a drug.  Yet the memory of her still invades my heart.  She is my stream of consciousness.  It is a love triangle that I never would have anticipated.  They wouldn't be here had she lived.  I love her...through them, for them.      I miss her.  And what I will never have with her. But with them...well, I have everything.
At times I wish I could go back in time, to that grief stricken lost woman and tell her that the sun will shine again.  That it will be so bright that it will be blinding.  But I know that she wouldn't listen.  And ultimately...it has been this journey that has defined her.
Oh...what a year.