Not Second Best

Avery is a daily revelation.

No matter how often I tell myself that she is different from Briar, I am shocked by just how different she is. I am forever asking Sean if he remembers Briar doing something the way Avery is. The answer is a perfect mix of yes and no.

Something purely Avery, that is perhaps my favorite thing, is her embrace.

She waits. She watches me, waiting for my full attention and then she looks at me. Really looks at me. Her eyes search my face and and then penetrate to my very soul. She holds my gaze and her face slowly blooms into a smile that extends from the top of her downy head to her exquisitely long toes. She puts her whisper soft fingers on the sides of my face and neck and dives into me. Her head burrows in my neck or presses directly against my own face. She holds me in a fiercely emphatic kiss and then I feel her inside of me.

The enormity of my devotion to her presses against me. She is so undemanding and yet I feel the call to love her more intensely than I did Briar. My love for Briar grew throughout my pregnancy with her and required no conscious participation on my part. It just was. My love for Avery is something different. I am as aware of its development and evolution as I am of her physical growth. I have a constant companion in the ache I feel from loving her. The occasional guilt of loving her differently weighs heavily on me, so too does the realization that the depth of what I feel for her at times surpasses the way I love Briar.

It would be impossible to love them the same. I hope that I will be able to share with them both how important it was and will be for our relationships to reflect the individual miracles that they each are. They are each, together and alone, my entire life.