Summer is here. As I type, the afternoon showers have arrived, dimming the house to perfect napping conditions for Lainey and providing just the right volume of pitter-patter for Nella to compete with, her happy voice getting louder and louder on the floor next to me. And from now until August, there will be many of these–afternoons when the lanai looks exactly like this…

And I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what it’s supposed to look like according to The Proverbial Book of Summer…if there was one.

I’ve been dabbling in my summer to-do list.

Wearing yellow.

Sucking down popsicles in the afternoon heat.

Purple’s the best, you know.

Slipping into the cool waters of our pool for family swim nights.

Which brings me to the announcement that, as of this week, Lainey is now back-floating by herself and swimming short distances to Daddy. I’ve wanted to do swim lessons several times but Brett insisted he teaches her. He promised a few weeks ago, she’d be swimming by herself by the end of June. And when they yelled for me to come out last night, I was ecstatic to find the little fish proudly smiling on her back.

She is determined. And I love her.

She is joining me in my summer loves like soaking our umbrella under the sprinkler…

…and watching our sunflowers get really big behind the pool screen.

If only we had fireflies. We could could catch them in jars, watch them twinkle and set them free into the woods. I suppose you can’t have it all.

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Nella has been enjoying discovering herself behind the mirror.

She makes slow and deliberate movements, watching her little double make the same and intently taking it in.

And then, suddenly, she’ll break into a glorious smile.

Houston, we have one very happy baby.

We had lunch today with our friend Mia–sharing the magic and the love. Nella’s six days older so we figure she’ll be bossing her around in no time. But today, it was nothin’ but love.

And speaking of love…

Here’s high-kickin’ some back at ya.

Our little flour sack continues to grow. More robust. More beautiful. More lively and lovely every day. By this time with Lainey, I was so disappointed to have my “keg” dried up. I’m so blessed this time to have a full tap and every day, come “happy hour,” we curl up and she reaches out to grab my hand while we lock eyes and she sucks and breathes and smiles and can’t decide whether to focus on eating or me. And I know we give and love and delve our souls out to our littles without any expectation of return, but can I just say that being loved back by my girls…being mauled with kisses and catching their eyes when I know they are just screaming “I love you” makes me feel like a gazillion bucks? Can I get an amen?!

And this one?

She’s been my best friend, climbing up on chairs to stir spaghetti sauce next to me, trailing behind me into the bedroom to change Nella’s diaper, sitting on the bathroom counter passing me mascara tubes while I do my make-up. We call her Little Shadow. Oh, how happy she makes me.

Nella has a giveaway winner to report…

Random.org picks Commenter #403: Jenny Scroggins. Woo-hoo for Scroggins! Jenny, e-mail me (kascryder@yahoo.com) your address please and your choice of $50 merchandise from Bel Kai Designs, and somethin’ pretty will be making its way to your mailbox soon!

With that said…here’s a little video snippet of our little talker.

The girl digs her dad. Watch it HERE.

The Summer List continues. Hmmm…I’m thinking bright-colored flip-flops, some bubbles, fresh-squeezed lemonade….and watermelon. Yes, it’s going to be a good week.

I like that when I go to type the title “Stream of Consciousness,” Blogger predicts it with just the first few taps of S-t-… Apparently, it’s a frequent post. And frame of mind, might I add.

So, with that said…here we go.

You know what I love? I love getting e-mails from mamas who are pregnant and just found out their little has D.S. I love the way my heart leaps for them because I know just where they are. I love that when I hit “reply,” there is a blank screen there and that my fingers can’t type fast enough to fill it. And I want to scoop them from their place and wormhole them through the Internet into our home. I want to hug them and say, “Look. Look here. Happiness, Babe. You’re gunna be fine.” I like that.

I love days when the house is a mess and I don’t know what to make for dinner and I’m wearing yoga pants for the third day in a row and halfway through the afternoon, my friend calls and says, “Wanna come over?” and I say, simply, Yes. Yes, I want to come over. And I get out of dodge like a bat out of hell, leaving everything because sometimes, sanity comes in the form of friends and their pools and their really cute kid who loves my girl like a sister.

They swam. They swam like their lives depended on it, pruning their fingers, drenching their lashes into long drippy black strips–very Baby Mabelline.

And Anna Ruth and I lounged poolside sipping our Southern sweet teas (Anna Ruth being the true Southern Belle, you know) and playing with the Little Miss while the bigger misses jumped and splashed and carefully chose which Polly Pockets and Little Ponies would be so lucky to join them in the shallow end…

I love this friend of my girl. A full year older than Lainey, perfect for idolizing and adoring and a good one for the role because she is sweet as pie…southern peach pie, of course.

And Lainey was just a dream yet to be back when we fell in love with Miss Baylee…

And now…swoon. They’re besties…and look, us mamas even subconsciously matched their swimsuits.

And Nella was along for the ride, trailing back from the pool tucked in Baylee’s stroller with half-painted pigs hangin’ out. The essence of Chill, my little one.

We had a follow-up cardiologist appointment today…nothing D.S. related but rather just a check to see if a small, unconcerning hold had closed. She smiled through the whole thing…even earned herself a Barbie sticker on her diaper because she was that good.

I think doctors and clinics and places that prick and poke and invade our space are scary for mamas. No one wants to be there and just the entrance into these places causes a little jolt…a brief sickening feeling where you wonder what if and how could and oh, I could never…but you do it. I never thought I could live the whole therapist-in-my-house-every-week-for-three-years thing either but once you cross that bridge, you realize it’s okay. You seperate the clinical from the emotional and begin to appreciate the amazing world of medical advancements. It’s a small part of the bigger picture and a part that is critical in allowing the bigger picture to be more beautiful. And, I’m so thankful for these people that know what they do to make life a little more grand for my littles…for us.

So, we smile. Even if we’re covered with stickers and electrodes.

I love returning from a crazy morning of throwing things in diaper bags, u-turning to backtrack a missed street, shlepping a carseat through a maze of medical buidling hallways, painfully discovering that the underwire on my bra has dislodged and is attempting to drill a hole through my left side while I nod my head, pretending I understand medical terms that are far above my head, and finally zipping through yellow lights to get a hungry baby home only to have to pull over in a Wendy’s parking lot to nurse her in the front seat while some guy taps on my window (there were other people around, thankfully) and asks, through the small crack I allowed him to peek through, “Are you Jennifer?”

No, dude. I’m not Jennifer. And I don’t want to know why you were supposed to meet a girl you’ve never met in a Wendy’s parking lot. I’m just sayin.

And after all that, we came home. We read books and tickled and lounged around in bed being silly and prolonging naps like good mamas sometimes do.

I like the way she stretches her arms out when she’s sidled next to me, nursing in bed.

I like the way Lainey had a mad case of the sillies at naptime today.

I love my happy place, my happy girls.

And, thank you, Daddy. Along with really good dad and super cool husband, you are finding yourself a pretty good picture-taker title too.

Nella had her four month appointment yesterday.

And, amid most of the time where I honestly forget she’s different, I am reminded every once and awhile. Like getting ready to go to the doctor and feeling a little flutter inside. Like what if they tell me something. Like what if they rock my world again. Like what if one of those “increased likelihoods” that happen to attach themselves to that sweet little chromosome comes true.

But, here’s the thing. Once you become a parent…once you start feeling a little funny and you buy that pregnancy test…once you see a pink plus sign…once you know it’s not just you anymore…well, you automatically carry around, for the rest of your life, an increased likelihood. To have your heart broken. And it’s a constant fear that we struggle to put to rest.

And we can choose to be afraid or we can choose to live.

And I choose to live.

Because an “increased likelihood of having your heart broken” also carries with it an increased likelihood to find yourself the happiest you’ve ever been in life.

And so we walked into that exam room, as a family, and everything was just as it should be. Nella is doing great–a robust eleven-and-some pounds–and happy to play patient to Dr. Foley and her assistant, the big sister.

And I am reminded, once again, of my gratitude for having the most caring amazing pediatrician…

…who has this incredible ability to compress all the scary things I might have to think about for the next three years into a few lines of chicken scratch on a small square of prescription paper…and then she takes all my freakish motherness with its dumb questions and silly comparisons and melts them into relief when she laughs with her warm, motherly grin and says things like, “well, of course she’s perfect!” or “she IS normal, Kelle…with just a little something extra.”

I made an appointment for her six month eye exam after our doctor visit yesterday. And I rattled off insurance information and birth date and spelled out her name to the kind woman on the phone, and then something happened. For the first time, I spit “it” out without the slightest of pain.

“Reason for visit,” she asked.

“She has Down syndrome” I answered.

She has Down syndrome. How many times I’ve said this these past four months and felt that pain. That sting that surges deep inside. Nella Cordelia has Down syndrome and, for once, it doesn’t sound like a statement from an obituary. I rattled it off to Karen the receptionist like I was announcing something as simple as a rash, a cold, a fever. I hesitated for just a moment after I said it, waiting for that sting, but it didn’t come. My shoulders rested and I smiled.

“Okee-doke, we’ll see in you July,” she finished. I could sense the smile in her voice. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t speak with apology like so many that obviously feel so sorry for us do. We were just two women on the phone, throwing around the D.S. term like it was no big deal and whether or not Karen the receptionist knew, she was part of a bigger deal for me. Another step along the journey of acceptance.

Oh, it feels so good to settle into this. It feels so good to know that we’ve transformed deep discomfort into a comfortable place of knowing that this is just a part of parenthood. Parenthood that comes with the increased likelihood of facing trials and coming out stronger, wiser, better.

I’ve already been on that journey…

…and this one’s not much different.

We spent the rest of the day as a family, grabbing a burger and fries late in the afternoon at a local cafe, watching Lainey dip her fries, lick the ketchep off and proclaim, “Me lub kep-kep.”

Me lub a lot of things. Like weekends and coffee and knowing that tomorrow is going to be a beautiful day. Isle of Capri, Baby. With a huge crew of our friends…some old, some new.

Me lub Life.