JOY AND WONDER
(Han)
It's 0300 here on Coruscant. In the distant past, Leia and I would be sleeping, or in bed doing...other things. However, about six months ago, our middle of the night routine changed with the arrival of our babies.
I'd never felt the urge to reproduce, but that was before I met Leia.
About half an hour after Leia and I met, I knew I wanted to marry her. About an hour after that, I decided that I wanted to be a father. It took some doing to get Leia around to the reproduction part. I'm so glad she did. She is an incredible mother.
I'm on the sofa cuddling a mildly fussy Jaina while Leia breastfeeds Jacen. He woke up first, so he's busy nursing. I love the little sounds our babies make when they're feeding; little soft sighs of contentment that just melt my heart.
Jaina feels so soft and warm against my chest. It's winter now, and usually I hold her against my skin, but it's chilly enough that I'm wearing the T shirt Leia gave me for the first night of Winter Fete. It says, 'I'm the one your mother warned you about.'
Leia has repeatedly told me that I don't have to get up at night, but I've come to love this part of my life. I miss it when I'm out on runs. Not that I won't be sorry once they sleep through the night, but for now, I love any chance I have to hold our babies. They're growing like crazy; in no time at all, they won't be babies anymore.
It's Winter Fete, so the streets are still full of lights and color and sentients of all types, mostly intoxicated. Our home is decorated with garlands that smell of wonderful spices. We've blown out the candles for the night. But the lights of the city casts shadows across Leia and Jacen. She's smiling down at him as he feeds vigorously, stroking his soft baby hair and his chubby cheeks.
"He's huge," I comment. Jaina is tiny and dainty like her mom, but Jacen, well, he's quite the chubby one. He's one his way to becoming the size of a tauntaun, which I hope doesn't happen before he's out of diapers.
"You've seen how much he eats," she says to me as she shifts him to her other breast. "They're almost ready for solid food. I can't wait to see how big he gets with that."
Jaina's complaining again, so I shift her and look into her big dark eyes. She curls her tiny hand into a fist and sticks it in her mouth and stares at me, momentarily quiet.
"Do you know how much I love you?" I say to her. I can't resist her sweet baby face and gestures. I want to be the best father in the universe. I had no idea how to do it when we first brought them home, but that's the great thing: they teach you how to do it. How they like to be held, what things make them laugh, things like that. The first three months were pretty tedious; same tasks repeated over and over again. But they're crawling now, and sitting up, and really getting to know their world. And learning to see it through their eyes is amazing.
The one thing I really want our babies to have is something Leia and I never really had: a childhood. Force sensitive or not, they deserve to be kids for as long as it takes. I want them to have time to play, time to dream, time to do nothing at all, because sometimes that's when your best ideas come around.
"He's just about full. His eyes are closing," Leia says quietly to me, a sweet smile on her face.
"Let's do the baby swap," I say, handing Jaina to her mother. Jaina latches on hungrily and her fussing ceases. I take my sleeping son in my arms and hold him against my shoulder, patting his back.
"He can go back to bed," Leia says.
"I feel like holding him right now." And I do. He's definitely heavier than Jaina but has the same silky hair and soft skin as his sister. I dream about what he'll like. Will he want to be a pilot? Will he say, anything but that? Will he watch smashball with me or think it's the stupidest game ever played? (If he does, he's got a point, but it's still the goriest fun you can have upright and legal.) What kind of trouble will he get into? He is, after all, partly his father's son.
I look at Jaina, who's murmuring contented little baby noises like her brother, and think about her in the future. Will she be a tomboy or a girly girl? What would she like to be when she grows up? Of course, none of it will involve members of the opposite sex.
Someday, our babies will be too big to hold, and that's why I don't stay in bed when I could have.
Jaina finishes off, and Leia pats her back gently as Jaina's tiny head burrows into her shoulder. We carry the babies back to their cribs and tuck them in tenderly.
I never knew three in the morning could bring so much joy and wonder.