Tonight OR I'm Feeling Nauseatingly Sentimental

Joel and I had a quick adventure in Philadelphia today, where we saw BYU's Basketball team choke, sputter, and die in a period of two hours as a result of being proverbially sucker-punched in the gut by Texas A&M.

But that isn't what this post is about.

This post is about tonight. We arrived home a little while ago after picking up the kids from my parent's house. We drove home, peacefully and quietly lit by all the headlights on the freeway (well, quiet except for when Everett started eating his play-dough, but that is another story). We got home, put Everett to bed, and my attention turned to Ashley.

Joel's attention turned to Villanova. But that is also another story. Wow, scatterbrained today, aren't I?

I fed Ashley while completing my daily ritual of checking blogs (come on folks, if you haven't posted in a while, do it for me). She sat up and immediately leaned against me. She was sleepy and calm, and all of a sudden it almost felt like she was a tiny baby again. I could almost see her black hair, fine as silk threads. I could almost feel her tiny, tiny hands, and I could almost imagine that she fit neatly along the length of my forearm again.

Two minutes ago, I had been all ready to send her to bed and enjoy the quiet time to catch up on a few projects.

But suddenly I was rapturously, deliciously paralyzed--I was whisked to that place where it is just me, my sweet, drowsy baby, and a timeless amount of rocking, smelling, breathing, feeling, loving. Our surroundings fade. We melt into each other.

And then, after a few heavenly moments, I began to emerge from my state of happy delirium. But everything was still calm and dream-like. Ashley had fallen asleep on my shoulder, and I could feel her rhythmic breaths against my arm, like an airy heartbeat. Occasionally she would sigh contentedly and when she did, strands of her still delicate, still silky hair would tickle my ear. With every tickle came the reflexive desire that she would stay in this state forever. . .

But I remembered Everett, and the sweet little boy kisses he showers me with on a daily basis. How he gets excited about basketballs, dogs, stickers, sand, and cooking. How he laid down happily and calmly for a diaper and clothes change tonight. How he is just beginning to be old enough that we can really carry on conversations, and that he is still excited to talk about the nose on a hippo and the legs of a caterpillar and the sounds of heavy machinery.

And I realized, it keeps getting better. More complicated, maybe, but even better. And I can't wait to see how much better it will get.

And then, Joel shouts over some call by the refs, and I am broken out of my dreaminess, and brought to the dishes and the laundry and the sweeping and all the other things that call to me this time of night. So I get up and busy myself. But I don't think my smile will completely disappear--at least not until the next time I find poop in my boys hands and marker on the wall. And it's okay. What would we dreamers be, without these little moments to lean on?

And where would we be, without all the kids (our own or others') in the world that bring them?