One Smile

To see a huge smile take over your child when you come into view--and babies smile with their whole bodies sometimes--to step into the room after being away for a couple hours, and see the eyes light up, the grin break out on his face, and his little feet stamp with excitement--makes all the late nights (or no-sleep nights), all the fussiness, all the moments of unmitigated terror, all the diaper changes, all the strange excretions and eructations, all the CDs and books repeated four hundred times or more--hugely worth it.