In the middle of the night

3:38 am.

I hear Mia cry out in her crib from my bedroom - she still only has to make the slightest sound and I wake. In I go. "I peed," she says, sleepily. We've been doing very well with toilet training, and she takes it pretty seriously. About half the time she'll wake and tell me she needs to go before she has, and we make a sleepy trip to the washroom.

So, I get her out of her night diaper and we go "have a try" on the toilet. Nothing happens. My tired girl is falling asleep on the seat. I'm sitting on the bathroom floor, enormous belly and all, also wavering between sleep and waking. We pull up a new diaper, and she reaches out, gives me a big hug and a kiss and says, "You're a nice mummy."

At that moment I forgave her for a million night wakings... I had tears in my eyes as I hugged her back, told her how proud I was of her for trying on the toilet, gave her a big cuddle and put her back in her crib. "Night, Mummy," she says as I stroke her forehead, turn on her ocean sounds, and leave the room.

I lie in bed for the next twenty minutes as the baby in my belly kicks and wiggles. If I get up in the night, so does he - the minute I lie down again. I think about my sweet girl and how she's never said those words to me before. Sure, she's said "I love you", but I've never been sure if that's a mimic response or the real thing.

4:18 am.

I am just drifting back to sleep, finally, when I hear the urgent call from Mia's room. "Mummy! MUMMY!"

I haul my seven-months-pregnant and very tired self once again out of bed and half-stumble, half-lurch into her room.

"What's the matter, Bunny?" 

"I had a little popcorn. I eat it all up. I watch the Croods with Daddy. Night Mummy. Have a good sleep." 

Okay. That one was a lot less worth getting up for....