Last December, Bryan and I went to Maui for a week sans Madelyn. It was really wonderful as any Hawaiian getaway should be. We hadn’t been back to the island since our honeymoon, and it was our first big trip being non-parents since we became parents. We felt young(ish) and it was liberating and, in all honesty, we went thinking we’d end up with a newborn 40 weeks later. The baby make-cation ended up being unsuccessful, yet here we are, almost exactly a year later, leaving the state of Hawaii again, this time, 7 months pregnant.

Obviously, we didn’t need Hawaii to get our pregnancy (as it happened six months later on the mainland), and in hindsight, I’m so glad it didn’t happen when we planned for it to happen. That was our big mistake: planning!

To think that THIS December, right now, we would have had a three-month-old if our Maui antics had worked makes me sigh in relief. This past week in Kauai with Madelyn, who’s three years old and four months, was the most magical and perfect week. Having an infant in our lives would have made this trip nearly impossible, and if we’d taken this “familymoon” before Maui Baby was born, Madelyn would have been just over two-and-a-half, and, well, not nearly as fun.

Timing and circumstances have a funny way of working out. This is hard for someone like me to understand if I wasn’t living it first-hand. As a planner and self-labeled control freak, the concept drives me bonkers. Strangely, though, motherhood has taught me to relax a little, and while that stick is still firmly planted up the rear end, being a parent has enabled me the power and advantage of ignoring it on occasion. Stick, be damned! So what that I didn’t get my way when I wanted it… or for five more months after that. So what that we didn’t end up with an autumnal baby, who would have been a blob to carry around for Halloween. So what that we can’t make bad wink-wink jokes with finger quotes about Bryan’s “COCONUTS” or that we did the (more finger quotes) “HULA DANCE” for the baby to start out life in Maui. The timing was not right. The circumstances were not right.

I’m not one to think about higher powers having any influence about how things have happened. I choose to believe that chemistry and biology were not BFF during our week in Maui last December or the months that followed. Then, boom, science yada yada. Also, maybe wine. But still, science.

And here we are, a whole year later and a whole lot of me knocked up. I am so thoroughly glad to have had this extra time with Madelyn. So fortunate that those months of frustration over not getting pregnant happened. So high off of our wonderful week away with our greatest treasure (so far) (Unborn Daughter: when you read this when you’re older, please understand we had a treasure before you, but then you get to show up 3+ years later and make the bounty grow, OK? Apparently, this is how it works with siblings. This is not second-child complex-worthy and I refuse to pay for therapy due to this blog post).

The opportunity of no-such-luck Maui Baby made it possible for us to have the most aloha-tastic time with our first daughter. Silver linings. It was hard to see them all those months ago, but now I am pinching myself with glee and gratitude.

I am also extremely thankful for my hard-working husband who made it possible for us to have this vacation of our dreams, our last one as a family of three (Princeton makes us, technically and currently, a family of four, but he’s not allowed in Hawaii, so for purposes of this vacation, we were a family of three) (Also, I shouldn’t have to defend this because my dog, while brilliant, cannot read and thus, will not incur therapy side-by-side with his youngest human sister).

I will write more about our week’s adventures, but for now, I savor these memories, our last collection of such before a whole new adventure await which will surely entail a little less R & R but a lot more sweetness and love. For all this, I say mahalo.