Angels and demons

Every time I post a picture of my children sleeping, everyone says something about how these are the moments that make us love our children. I understand this sentiment completely. While awake, these little devils can make our lives a nightmare: screaming, fighting, refusing to eat, taking everything out of the kitchen drawer, strewing dirt all over the balcony, hanging on us when we just want a brief moment alone, the list goes on and on. When they sleep, they do none of  these things. They are magnificent in their silence and stillness.

But I think my favorite times with my children are when they are awake. When Mia and Aidyn are playing hide and seek with each other; when Mia walks into the room in her overalls and I realize she looks just like her cousin Asia when she was little - and like me; when Aidyn laughs out loud from being kissed on the neck; when Chloé says, doing her determined strut next to the stroller, "I can walk, Mammée (this is how she says it), reeeaaallly far. I can." And she does. When any of them looks at me and smiles. It's cliché, but true. When they're lying naked on the changing table and I can lean onto them and kiss their tiny lips and round cheeks and give them raspberries on the belly and yell "Naked baby! Naked baby!" and watch them squirm and hear them squeal.