Ahhhh, Reflection

Each night, I get the pleasure of helping Amelia go to bed. This normally includes about a twenty minute fist fight followed by about a 30 minute back scratching fest. Tonight, Amelia took abnormally long to fall asleep. As I leaned next to her in bed, developing repeat stress syndrome from scratching for so long, I began to get more and more frustrated with her. I get a very limited amount of time and it was bothering me that I was stuck in her bed. Then, I had one of those moments where you realize how lucky you are to be exactly where you are at that moment. It occurred to me how soon it will be that Amelia doesn't want me to tuck her in and how badly I'll miss scratching her little back. So, instead of stewing, I decided to snuggle. I slid over next to Amelia and wrapped her in my arms. I marveled at how tiny my "big" girl still is.  Just as I was starting to fall asleep myself, Amelia reached back and patted me softly on my arm. I'm not sure you could measure how content I felt in that moment....and then Amelia ripped a 5 second fart on my leg and said "tooooooot". Awesome.