What a difference two years makes. Merry Christmas, Small Boy.

R. and I spent Christmas 2003 in Washington, D.C. We had spent November of that year undergoing standard fertility testing and getting our results, which were, in a nutshell, "sans medical intervention you two will never have a biological child together." Well. Right then. Merry Christmas. We decided to spend the holidays in D.C and see some old friends and then go on to NYC for New Years. If you go to the right parts of those cities you can go for days on end without seeing a child. When you have been told you may never have your own child, not seeing other people's children for days on end is a good thing.

But at Christmas 2004 I was pregnant. Believe me when I tell you we did not expect our journey through IVF treatment to be so fast. So, well, easy. It's embarrassing, actually.

And now it is Small Boy's first Christmas.

Sometimes when I look at him tears prick my eyes. Who am I kidding? Often. The very idea of him, so improbable, so unlikely, takes my breath away. That he is even here at all. We have a photo of him as an embryo - he is either the two-celled or the four-celled embryo that was transferred into my uterus. One of those two held on, and turned into Small Boy.

I cannot believe my great good fortune. The grace that came into my life. The sheer stupid dumb luck of it all. This boy. This very boy and no other. There are no words for this, nothing in the world could have prepared me for this. After all of that, to end up here with him. To be mother to a Small Boy. To this precise Small Boy and no other, this Boy who hates carrots and loves Os and has six teeth and an outie belly button. To this Boy who points. Who calls the cat Eh-DAH. Who pulls my hair and grabs my glasses and who bangs on his high chair if I feed him his Kalbfleish-Kartoffeln too slowly. This Boy like no other.

This Small Boy. I look at him and my heart refracts like a kaleidoscope and I see his image everywhere. This wee Small Boy.