I bought him the largest pour-over coffee maker I could find and Italian roasted beans from back home.  He sent me alone to the city (after a failed attempt at playing on fat bikes) to shop for clothes for this new body I am housed in.  He wasn't surprised when I came home with more tiny, dinosaur printed things and fewer adult (mom?) things. We spent the night swinging the baby back and forth in the kitchen, watching him lift cardboard boxes like a boss, exclaiming over that goofy, wide-open smile and those two chompers he is growing.

This is us, now.  This is valentine's celebrations and Sunday evenings and our new definition of down time.

This is me shopping for tops with buttons, high waisted jeans, and loose flowing dresses.  Also me, promising to use multi-syllabic words and to read less news, more literature.  The piles of parenting books on my night stand.  The board books and the noise making books and the baby animal books resting against the C.S. Lewis collection on the living room shelf.  Googling The Farmer in the Dell when I can't remember what comes after the cow, stuffing a pillow at the base of the bedroom door at 2 am because crying it out is the very worst and one of us needs to please sleep.

And right this minute: checking the screen every couple seconds to see if that baby boy has stirred yet, missing him like mad while clinging to my coffee and my silence and my space (bless it).

He touches everything.  Sunday mornings, my prayer life, my face with those two wet hands pulling me down to him.  My goodness, God did a large thing when He fashioned parenthood: the act of birthing and then raising something so small, so needy and lovely and sticky and loud and completely irresistible.  My biggest prayer right now Please help me get it right.