The stuff dreams are made of.

I tip-toe into my son's room every night and I lean on his crib, gently touch my hand to his back, and I listen. (Risky, I know.) I listen for his sweet, tiny, deep and dreamy breaths. I listen for his legs to wrestle around his soft blanket and the patter of the white-noise machine. I listen for my heartbeat to calm as I breathe him in and rest my chin on the crib. (It begins pounding when I stand outside his door and debate the worthiness of this risk.)

I stand there with the ache in my throat that only this overwhelming and immense love can bring. With my hand on his back I see the sparks of all my mommy magical powers for love and sleep flow into him. And I whisper my magic song, "Sweet baby, sleep so sweet."

How quickly it is that I realize I have no powers. I dive to the floor aiming for the gracefulness of a ninja, and stealthily army-crawl back to the door before he realizes it wasn't a dream. Then I watch the baby monitor and chuckle as he face-plants to the mattress and is again fast asleep.

I have come to realize how lucky we are that we have an amazing child who goes to sleep by 6:30 pm and rarely wakes until at least 6 am. And big star for us, I am so proud of the cues we learned to read in order to understand our kid. Protecting his sleep has given us the sweetest, most generous kisser, wink-er, giggle-er, tractor-loving little boy -- who also somehow still learned to scream with a pitch to hurt your insides and once in awhile throw tantrums like the "bad kid" while we hide laughs behind our hands.

I seriously did not realize how fun this stage of life would be. To see the recognition behind his eyes and his response to our conversation and requests (like giving kisses) is something that I never really thought about. And I know that I promised to devote more time to other things (ahem, writing and working out again) but I am so focused on taking in every moment of all this...and getting back some time to focus on my husband too.