Late

This is my favorite picture of our house. 

In fact, it's one of my favorite pictures ever. 

Our neighbors took this picture exactly one year ago today - March 26 2011 - after a huge and unexpectedly late snowfall blanketed the city. 

You might think I like this picture because of the way the snow delicately frosts each tree branch, or maybe because it looks like there's a thick white blanket keeping our house cozy and warm. 

But neither of those are the reason.  In fact, it really has nothing to do with the outside of the house at all.  I like this photo so much because the peaceful serenity outside is the exact opposite of what is slowly unfolding on the inside at the precise moment our neighbors took this picture.

If you were to pull the curtains back you would see a woman who has just returned home from dropping her 1-year-old and 6-month-old daughters off at her in-laws' house for a much needed night of rest and relaxation.  As she unfolds the wrapper of her Grilled Stuft Burrito, a staple in her diet since 1993, she is confused as to why the smell suddenly seems unbearably pungent.  So pungent and repulsive, in fact, that she can barely take a bite before she has to throw it away. 

She sits back down on the couch for only a moment before shooting up, walking fast at first then running, into the kitchen to grab the calendar off the wall to try to piece together some dates. 

"It's all in my head,"  she thinks as she dry heaves into the toilet, calendar still in hand.

The next morning she takes her daughters with her to the drug store, a one-year-old in one hand and a six-month-old in a car seat in the other, and not having a free hand she lays the box of pregnancy on her six-month-old, who promptly picks them up and begins to chew. 

"It can't be,"  she thinks. 

But there they were.   

And here she is. 

The cutest darn shock of our lives that there ever was.