A few nights ago, I let Juniper stay up late to watch the Olympics. I really wanted to watch gymnastics with her, but apparently the authoritative Chinese government did not have sleep-deprived moms and their preschoolers in mind when scheduling the women's team finals at 11:00 p.m. EST. Maybe they were too busy training squadrons of 18-month-old orphans 22 hours a day for the 2016 games. So we watched synchronized diving instead.

Did I miss something? Since when is synchronized diving worthy of the prime-time slot? Since when is synchronized diving a sport? Just when I thought people were done making fun of synchronized swimming, along come the divers. Anyway, Juniper loved it. She gasped and clutched my leg during every jump and seemed thrilled by the way the divers twisted and flipped and entered the water together. Begrudgingly, I loved it too.

After about a half an hour, I notice that she's stopped shouting out: "Did you see that?" and silence reigns. I look down and realize that she's fallen asleep, on my lap in the rocking chair the way she did nearly every night for the first year of her life. Her hand is resting on my chest, in the exact spot where her brother still puts his when he falls asleep nursing. For a moment, she feels tiny to me again, and I can picture her face at 6 months and 18 months and then 2 years old.

But when I stand up with her in my arms, she is heavy. Her body is long and tan and skinny, and it's mostly elbows and knees. There is at least one bandaid and one mosquito bite on each limb. As I struggle to carry her up the stairs without waking her, she feels every day of 3 and a half.

After I lay her on her bed, cover her with blankets, and close the door to her room behind me, I walk back downstairs and start to sob. I choke on my words while I try to explain to Jim the way her hand had looked clutching my shirt. My face gets all red and crumpled up the way crying faces do, and my eyes burn. But I'm not sad --- I don't wish that she was still a baby. Instead, seeing her sleeping like that on my chest makes me realize that the sweet and clever 3 year-old that lives with us now is only here for a little while longer. She's going to be replaced by an even smarter 4 year-old, and so on. And as much as I'm looking forward to meeting her, I'll miss the little 3 year-old girl who fell asleep in my arms watching two different people slip into the water together during the Beijing Olympics.