Sleepy girl

There's nothing better than watching your child fall asleep.  After that, then, there's maybe nothing better than wondering what your child is doing, searching the house ("I bet she's in the toilet paper again"), and discovering her on your bed, passed out on top of a book of nursery rhymes.

Someone I know once told me that you never love your children so much as when they're asleep.  Now, there's one way to interpret that -- the "I love them when they're not pulling my hair and asking me for things" meaning.  Which, I have to say, it's certainly easier to feel affectionate towards the girls when they're not poking me in the eye and following me around the house crying to be picked up.  But (as I always remind myself during the screaming), love is more than affection. 

Love is constant.  Love is not mere emotion. It's easy to forget that when we stretch the word to include our feelings on everything from our spouse to potato chips.  But I think we can go on using the word as broadly as we do (and the French do) if we're careful to preserve our awe of LOVE.  Capital L, unending Love.  The Love that John means when he says, "God is love."

So I like to think of that in the second sense -- that there's something about watching your child sleep that just makes you well up.  Not with tears, necessarily, although that may happen.  With Love.