I’ve spent the better part of the last few hours barking orders, trying to formulate an edible meal and keeping children and dog from simultaneously bringing the house down to its studs.

I’m exhausted.

Kate exhibited her usual deep-seated streak of independence (where’d she get that?!), and Jack, just today, learned how much he loves the art of sass. Steve is working late tonight, so I feel like a small square of plastic wrap that’s being stretch across a giant casserole.

But bedtime, as any parent knows, is a mixed bag of blessing and blessed irritation. It’s the last chance to squeeze in a cuddle but you’re so exhausted you just want the bedtime fairy to whisk them into their beds and zap their eyes shut. But as I looked at them tonight I started to see their little faces as teenagers and adults. I saw the end of the era of them as my warm wiggly little cuddlers.

So despite my drooping eyelids and need to get that next chore done, we stole a few minutes off the bedtime clock tonight to curl up with each other and shorten the distance that school, work and chores seem to drive between us. In my current fit of mom-love and nostalgia, I even read that dreaded Thomas the Tank book that feels like, if it were a movie, it would be twice as long as Benjamin Button (and without the bonus that is Brad Pitt).

As we huddled in our quiet little wrinkle in time, Kate reached over with her delicately long fingers and rubbed by neck while Jack made his Spiderman action figure do a table pose (his big sister taught him some yoga, obviously) before it leaped in a loud explosion onto the floor.

And for one more night, they were the age that I love them to be; still so filled with sweetness in the bedtime hour that it makes my face hurt.

So good night and sleep tight, my little darlings, for tomorrow, you’ll be a little older.