My Pretty Little Horses

Every morning sometime around 3am, almost without fail, I stir in my humongous bed at the sound of quick pitter patter of 3 year old feet slapping across the tile trail from her room to mine.  I roll over and barely lift an eyelid just to confirm the culprit.  She hoists herself up the mountain of poofy bedding and slides across my back into the duvet nest between me and Cristian.  She takes what feels like forever to settle, arranging the sheet just so and squirming her body in the position that consumes the maximum circumference possible.  Often, she situates in a horizontal stretch between the two of us so that our bodies cummulatively spell out a giant "H" as we sleep.  Sometimes, it's incredibly annoying for all her tossing and wriggling and pillow stealing and complaining of needing help to go potty just when I think we can drift back into sleep.  Still, she is warm and snuggly.  And to be honest, I've come to appreciate our skinny little slight that balls up and stretches out in the space that needs filling in our vast expanse of a bed.  I love the way her hair splays in tight curls across my pillow smelling of California baby aromatics and tentatively clean locks.  I love to hear the rhythm of her breath, the only movement in my unusually stilled child.

Her sister is the easiest baby to put to sleep.  Ever.  In the entire world.  Put her in the crib wide awake, little to no transition, and leave.  The girl just obliges and hangs out quietly until she's asleep.  But she often wakes in the night calling my name or sometimes, her father's.  I hear her cry through the monitor for something specific: a diaper change, 4 ounces of cool water downed in loud gulps, or a paci lost to the ocean of carpet beneath her.  Always, Cristian or I go to her.  I snuggle her and sing an extra verse of "All the Pretty Little Horses." Half asleep and drowsy, she sings along with me.  She knows all the words at the end of each line and slurs them through a paci plugged mouth between gunks.  I smile.  I  roll her tight in a tubing of blanket and  nestle her in close to her babydoll and stuffed pug.  I stroke her unruly, corkscrew hair and run my fingers across her smoothly soft, rounded cheek.  Sometimes I just sit an extra few minutes and admire her adorableness by the dim glow of the monitor light.  I imagine it won't be long before she can scale out of her crib and join the rest of us in our big bed mid night.  My children seem to be led by a gravitational pull towards our room when the moon shines.

I never thought I'd say this, but the break in sleep doesn't bother me so much anymore.  They return to sleep and I hold on to my wakeful moment for just a minute longer.  I find myself in the still silence of night and drink in the absence of noise and movement and dutiful rushing from one commitment to the next.  I lie delighted in a blanket of darkness, punctuated only by soft nightlights, the heater cycling on and off, and the presence of little girls dreaming.

All the pretty little horses, indeed.