So when she’s gotten in at midnight and Kieran wakes up at 2 with night terrors, instead of panicking, she thinks, “I haven’t seen him all day. I can’t wait to hold that little boy! I run into his room and jump into bed with him and smell his little head. He falls back to sleep in two seconds. I don’t, because once I’m up, I’m up.” But she’s aware that soon her son won’t need her as much. “I know in the snap of my fingers he’s not going to let me in his room. So I’m taking this moment, and I’m going to embrace it.

“It doesn’t mean there aren’t days where, the exhaustion, you want to just keel over,” she sums up. “My feeling is, if I can do this job and still manage to be a wife and mother and have a life, then I can pretty much do anything.” And though, she adds, it took her some time to get here, “I feel this is exactly where I’m supposed to be.”

JOHANNA SCHNELLER previously profiled Diane Keaton for More.