9:42. Finally settling down after a long and spirited birthday night. Quinn is next to me in bed, his sweet little cherub of an arm is tucked in the crook of my elbow. He is falling asleep slowly, his breaths are becoming more rhythmic, stopping now and again to suckle at his Nuk. Before he started to drift off, he said, “Mommy. I like you all of the time.”
He is likely the only one on the planet to feel that way, so I am soaking it up. He likes me to scroll through my Instagram feed so that he can name the recognizable images: a plane, a dog, two dogs, Lizzie, Haley, that’s me, a tree, Luke, Willy, a cake…
My feed tonight was filled with these lovely images of my children. I just stare at them and feel …. I feel, I don’t know exactly. Proud? Lucky? Anticipatory? I feel a bit sad too… Wanting to preserve them just the way they are now, forever. Their youthful faces, with lives that are just beginning, stare back at me and I begin to drift off to sleep too, wondering who they will become.