by Krymzen Hall

Created on: May 22, 2008   Last Updated: June 12, 2009

When my eldest child reached eight, something inside me felt unzipped. Don't get me wrong, I loved the little guy, wouldn't have traded him for anything. But I still carried the yearning to nurture a baby. So, realizing that my thirties would eventually turn to forties, I had my second child.

We had completed the nursery with a teddy bear quilt, matching lamp, and a diaper holder. The room was serene, spoke of curiosity and innocence. One day, a week over my due date, I stood by the empty crib, the teddy bear smiling at me, as I wondered if my child would ever arrive.

He did. And once he learned how to crawl, the nursery was never the same, or clean, again.

I quickly learned that the anticipation of his birth was just the calm before the reality.

Before conceiving, I realized that I would carry most of the load because of my husband's military obligations. But my eldest child had always been a self-contained bundle of joy who seemed to have an inherent desire to be normal. Sure he cried when he needed comfort and food, but I could leave him alone in his room for a second and know that his room would only sustain minimal damage.

Either I carried selective memories from my first son's infancy, or I simply believed they would have the same personalities. But after eleven months of no sleep, I stopped analyzing what went wrong and I just tried to survive.

At my lowest points, which usually came around two in the morning under a hail iridescent screams, I suffered from the typical insane regrets, questioning the birth of my second son the same way a CEO questioned hiring decisions. Then when it was over, and my son was sleeping peacefully, I regretted the regret. I knew he was my angel, brought to me for a purpose. And when he grew a little older, I learned to welcome his personality, allowed him to be his own baby.

And I've been laughing ever since!

The funniest, most indelible moment, came in the midst of war. My kids were behaving themselves quite well on this particular day. I took them out for pizza at a food court. We were alone because my husband was deployed. My baby was two. His brother was ten. The stack of two-liter bottles of orange soda, in the middle of the eating area, was just erected. And the stack was tall, held together by a frame of some sort.

I stood in line, my children at my side. My oldest and I perused the menu, as if there were a million ways to order a cheese pizza. Then I looked to my side and spoke the words that had become

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