All-Nighter

When we drove to Virginia several weeks ago to meet Arlo's new cuz, Atticus, and to shore up plans for our old abode there, we drove straight through the night while Arlo was sacked out in his carseat. Arlo would stir whenever we stopped for gas or for a bathroom break, and I would nurse him in the backseat or change his dipe, and then deposit his drowsy rump back into his warm lil' throne of safety. He would be soundly snoozing again by the time our car was at full speed on the highway. It all worked out kind of perfectly, you know, save for the whole missing an entire night's worth of precious sleep. (Sleep is still very precious 'round these parts, as no, my half-pint heir still does not sleep through the night.)

I think the last all-nighter that Nick and I pulled together was the night Arlo was born. Unlike the all-nighter during which Arlo's stubbornly posterior body made its debut after two grueling, med-free, back-grinding hours of pushing, this more recent all-nighter was filled with  laughs and fueled by coffee and the occasional gas station donut. Mmm.

We were in the mountains of West Virginia when the sun rose, and it was as if Mother Nature had rolled out the red carpet for us, ushering us so poshly back into the east coast. Gauzy clouds were draped across the mountains like a well-worn blanket over an old woman's shoulders. It was beautiful. Homey.

A short while later, Arlo woke and demanded to be unleashed from the cow-printed confines of his carseat. We made an unplanned, but perfectly timed stop in Charlottesville, a favorite destination of many of our past day trips, where we ate pancakes and drank more coffee and watched a very well-rested Arlo buzz all over the pedestrian mall. This picture was taken shortly after breakfast that morning.

The morning felt kind of perfect, sleep deprivation and all, much like that other all-nighter when we finally held our long-awaited son in our arms.