525,600 minutes

One year. 

It's been one entire year. And this song couldn't be more appropriate...

How do you measure, measure a year?

In daylights (our daytime adventures around the world)

 

In sunsets (the witching hour...turned the time when everything winds down and becomes peaceful)

In midnights (way too many of these at the beginning to count...they built character)

In cups of coffee (every morning. without fail. we didn't really drink much coffee before this, btw)

In inches (inches that increased month after month... i can't believe how much they've grown)

In miles (from Delhi to Zurich to London... then a visit home London to Chicago to San Francisco... then a trip to Paris... a week in Mykonos... a week in Cannes... a trip/move back to the US again... and a pre-first birthday celebration in Maui)

In laughter (so much of this... from them, from us, from our friends and family)

In strife (it's not always easy and we've survived a year. not sure how we did it.)

How about love? Measure in love. (Love. More love than we've ever had for anything. Ever. And they give it right back)

Exactly 525,600 minutes ago, Sienna and Sebastian were born. Thinking back to that day, it seems surreal. Actually, the entire eight months leading up to that day seem surreal. Did it all really happen? Did we actually spend years trying so hard to have something so special? Yes, we did. And I'm so happy that we have this blog to remind us. 

I have to be honest, we haven't been focused much on the blog. Maybe it's the uber focus we have on the kids. Or maybe it's because we realized that this was a wonderful documentation of a moment in time and that time has passed. Over the past year, we've thought a lot about when and how to post our final post to the blog. We were going to do it at six months, then nine... but we decided to share our latest update at twelve.

The past year has been amazing. Sienna and Sebastian have brought an unexplainable amount of happiness to our lives and to everyone around us. They have been such a blast. And we have been lucky. We're lucky not only to have them in our lives, but we're lucky that they are healthy, that they decided to sleep all night at about 9 weeks, that they have been on identical schedules since we brought them home from the hospital and that they have this amazing power that they use when they smile at you. It stops you right in your tracks. For a split second, you don't think of anything. No stress, no anger, no sleepiness, no frustration. Don't get me wrong though, there have been hard times. The beginning was tough, and I think we mentally prepared for it to be that way. There have been a few random tough days. But none of that really ends up mattering. Somehow those are easily forgotten.

As we close out this blog and begin to look towards the life of twin one year olds, we want to say thank you. Thank you to our amazing surrogate and her family. Thank you to Dr. Shivani and her team for taking such good care of our surrogate and our twins. Thank you to our friends and our family for being there right alongside us during this emotional and challenging journey. And thank you to all of you, our blog-friends. You provided us with a level of support that we can't put words to. You were the source of a wealth of information on what to expect, how to handle the tough parts, how to get through the process in India... and you always reminded us, even when we were down, to keep going. Keep trying. Don't give up. 

With that, Taj Ma Baby is finally coming to an end. For those of you who are on this journey, I hope that our blog has provided you with some insight, some encouragement and some faith.

Don't give up. It's hard, it's emotional. But the thing that matters most in this instance, is not the journey, it's the destination. And there is no destination as warm, as charming and as fulfilling as being a dad.