For the past several weeks, I have been in nesting overdrive. Primal hormones are not a thing to be taken lightly. They have overtaken my body and I can no longer shut a drawer without first reorganizing it. My husband comes home each evening to pile of miscellanea waiting to be shuttled to the basement.

Though I am bone-marrow tired and dragging around a thirty-pound anchor, I cannot sit still. I cannot think. I cannot write. I can only work. My mind is consumed with one thought: “Baby is coming. Baby is coming. Baby is coming.”

Hungryman is sitting next to me with baby name books spread over his lap. He’s writing names in the air like a composer piecing together his next opus. This baby is hours away from making an appearance and the name still remains as elusive as the hidden face.

And while all around me is a frenzy of baby preparation, what I really want to tell you about is this gift called three weeks of Christmas vacation.

You see, I love that Ava goes to school. And I love Ava’s school. But adjusting to our separation and the rigidity of a school routine has been a kin to a strapping a saddle to a horse for the first time. I feel cinched and bound—and I have chafed under the burden of this schedule.

I missed the spontaneity of our free mornings. We had patterns and routines, but they were flexible. Somehow there always seem to be time for mini-excursions and extra crafts. School is rigid. Ava must be there at the same time every day for five straight days.

I loved those open days when Ava placed her hand in mine and we took on world, real and imagined.

From now on we will have another, a much desired other, but another just the same. Between school starting and this baby coming, that beautiful chapter has closed. And in life, you rarely get to revisit a chapter.

And so I was anticipating Ava’s Christmas vacation as much as she was the shiny, wrapped gifts under the tree. The first two weeks were swallowed up by celebrations and family. But that third week, when most everyone returned to work and Ava’s friends had reclaimed their places in school, she was all mine. I was all her’s.

It was as thought we had shaved out our own sliver of time.

At first I thought that we would march through all our favorite places, taking on the city the way we did in her pre-school days. And then Minnesota was blasted with an arctic chill that locked her up in an ice block for the entire week.

With the frigid winds and slippery sidewalks outside, Ava and I snuggled up inside under a quilt of books. We danced with the dromedary at Barbar’s wedding feast, helped Harry go from a black dog with white spots to a white dog with black spots, stood backstage with Angelina, and slid down stacks of hay with Laura and Mary. We hid from badgers, told Pinkie stories, sipped cocoa, and snuggled.

For those five days it was her and me, and me and her. We returned to the roots of our relationship—her rocking chair. It was a beautiful week.

In a very short time, her life, our life is going to change.

In order to type these words, I have to look over a massive sphere sitting on my lap.  I’m full of baby and full of thanksgiving. This little one making waves across my abdomen is an answer to her prayers and our prayers.

And while the wait was long, I can’t imagine a girl that I would have rather spent the past six years with. Ava, you are my delight and the daughter of my dreams.