You know when you’re in a moment and you feel very “in” that moment? Everything about that moment is intensified – your emotions and senses heightened. The colors are brighter and the smells stronger and the feelings bigger. For some reason the details are clearer and you’re just very “in the moment”. Well, I just had one of those moments.

I had just gotten Lilah out of the bath, wrapped her up in her pink bunny towel, and taken her upstairs to get her jammies on. Jacob had laid everything out perfectly for me – a diaper and her lotion on the left, a paci and a onesie on the right, and her swaddle and jammies in the middle. Bunny jammies! What a coincidence! Bunny towel and bunny jammies on the same night! I digress.

So I put on her diaper, lavender lotioned her little chunky legs, and laid her on top of her jammies. I grabbed each of her teeny feet in each of my hands, planning to sneak a kiss before I put them in their bunny feet. I leaned over  and brought my mouth to her tiny toes and she smiled. The moment I smooched she giggled. I buried my face in her feet, covering my eyes- thus beginning a very strange, pretty adorable version of peekaboo. She giggled and smiled and looked at me like there was nowhere she’d rather be in the world than on this bed, half-naked, playing foot-peekaboo with her momma by the very last light of the day. And I didn’t want to be anywhere else in the world either. It was so sweet and special that I wanted it to last forever. I was tempted to grab my iPhone to capture it, so that this moment – this joy – wouldn’t disappear with the sun. But, I knew that I should give my iPhone a rest and just savor those sweet smiles and sniff those lavender-scented toes… this moment was just for my heart. I felt so joyful and so happy but somehow a little bit sad at the same time.

Has that happened to you before? You’re experiencing something so amazing and beautiful but you’re sad when you realize how fleeting it is.

How can you feel such joy in that moment with simultaneous sadness?

Perhaps that’s what makes those moments so special – the fact that we know they will end and that we need to savor them while they last.