"Is this a Mommy-Daughter night?"

When Lily was an infant and Jeff worked at least four nights a week, I remember so vividly dreading coming home on winter evenings alone, putting on NPR so I could listen to something of interest, stumbling through making a palatable dinner for one, and counting the minutes until the witching hour had at last passed and bedtime had arrived.

When Lily was a toddler and Jeff worked at least three nights a week, I remember still dreading coming home on winter evenings alone, enduring KIDZ BOP on the Pandora station, painstakingly creating a dinner that Lily might actually consume and I had no interest in, and counting the minutes until the tantrums had at last passed and bedtime had arrived.

Now that Lily is a preschooler and Jeff works only two nights a week, I anticipate with great excitement the nights Lily and I have to ourselves. By the time it's noon, everyone in the office has heard me talk about our Mother-Daughter Night, and Jeff reports that Lily tells everyone she encounters that it's going to be "just my special night with Mommy." We fluctuate between two favorite dates: a trip to the library followed by a visit to Panera or a visit to a game at my school followed by broccoli pasta at home.

With my commitment this year to attend one game a week, Lily has had no choice but to become my little sidekick on most Thursday afternoons. She's a cheerleader extraordinaire, shouting encouragement to the players, telling them "it's okay!" when they make an error, and even learning to spell out the school's name ("just like the big kids do!"). She's also got quite a fan club, whether it's the Lower School students who know her from extended care during faculty meetings or her favorite babysitter or the parents of my students who indulge her squirminess and giggles even when they've stretched my patience. She's been on the grass sidelines of soccer scrimmages, the wooden bleachers of field hockey games, and the polished floors of volleyball matches. Tonight, she took in her first squash match, and ice hockey is up next weekend.

Each time, at some point, she grabs my arm and asks if we might go home soon as she's getting a little bored and pretty hungry. So we make our way back to the car (where she clips herself into her car seat), open a bag of Smartfood to share on the drive, and take turns choosing favorite songs to sing along to on the winding back roads that take us home. Once there, she joins me in dinner prep, whether by chopping broccoli (with a very dull butter knife), measuring pasta, or simply telling me stories about her day at school as she colors at the butcher block in the kitchen (still perched in her learning tower, just as she has been for so long). When we finally sit down to eat, she happily hums "yum!" as she digs into her first bite of broccoli, pasta, and goat cheese, and she readily takes her bowl to the kitchen at the end of the meal, then leads the way upstairs to get ready for bed.

Is it always this perfect? No, of course not. Some nights hold unexpected tantrums, surprising meltdowns, or incredibly powerful bursts of frustration. (And those don't all always come from Lily--sometimes I'm just too overwhelmed at the end of the day, too.) But fewer nights hold those moments than they used to, and I found myself particularly grateful for that tonight as we curled up together in Lily's bed after her story, first quietly saying our prayers and then gently moving into favorite bedtime songs.

Here's what I realized tonight: Lily didn't cry today. (Or, at the very least, she didn't cry with me.) She didn't yell at me or lash out or get frustrated when things didn't go exactly her way. She rolled with what the evening brought, finding creative ways to solve problems (like the extra "D" she turned into an "A" when she realized she'd started "DADDY" off with too many "D"s). And she reminded me that, just as the infant and toddler stages didn't last forever, neither will this one.

So I'm going to soak up every minute of it that I get.