Good night.

It's dark outside so early now, but there is a moon tonight that shines with such brightness that the trees are casting crisp shadows on the earth beneath them and the big, glacial boulders in my front yard are shining in the light. Inside, the Christmas tree glows with its tiny lights and the house still echoes from the voices and stomping feet of the six children who filled it with the noise of eighteen only a few hours earlier.

The dinner party over but the excitement still very much present, it took me quite some time to get Maeve settled down and into bed tonight. During the day I can wrap her up burrito style and walk around with her while she nurses and I talk to the kids, play Monopoly, or otherwise carry on with our daily life. She dozes off and I can then set her down upstairs for her snooze and leave her. But at night it's harder for her to calm down, and because her daytime naps are so erratic in both length and frequency, bedtime hasn't been consistent for her or me. (I could go on about this, because as you know the one thing I can get almost type-A about is children getting enough sleep, and all my children were out like lights by 7 PM at the LATEST by this age, But Maeve is different, and our life is different). So I try every night to draw in great, deep breaths and remind myself of how fleeting this time is, this baby-time.

So tonight I lay in bed with her, after we'd walked upstairs in the dark for a time to get her dozing. We lay in our bed together and she nursed a little more and I patted her back and sang to her softly while I looked out my great, huge windows that overlook the front yard and the river. I could see the moonlight reflected in the rushing water and the cold stillness of the earth below. The dark seemed to wrap itself around us, even in the silvery light. Somehow being able to see in the darkness made it more present. I lay there, looking out, and thought, I have all the time in the world for you, my dear. I lay there with her, feeling the warmth of her little body against mine, knowing with all the certainty in the world just how unbelievably lucky I am to have the privilege to do just this.