There are some moments I wish I could freeze in time – or somehow take a snapshot to forever hold on to the memory. Do you ever have those moments – ones that just tug at your heart strings, but yet are so simple and impossible to truly capture with a picture. There are times when I wish I was an artist – perhaps I would sketch the images when they are fresh in my head. Bedtime tonight was one of those moments – well, three of those moments.
The evening was a typical night – we gave him his bath, he played with his ducky and only attempted to climb out of the bath tub two times. We really do need to start bathing him in the upstairs bath tub! Elliot took Micah upstairs after bath time. He put on Micah’s pajamas, read him a story and gave him his bottle. Micah was sleepy, so Elliot put Micah in his crib…and the crying began. Usually, Micah either rolls right over and falls asleep, or he rolls around the crib a bit restless (but trying to sleep), or he is happy and chats with his toys until he falls asleep. We waited a minute to see what would happen, but it was obvious that Micah needed a bit more cuddling before bed time.
I walked in, picked him up and sat with him on the glider. As we rocked together, Micah sucked his thumb and nestled in close to my chest. I held him with one hand on his head, gently stroking his hair, and the other arm wrapped around his body with my hand fanned out rubbing his back and tush. This was moment number one. I just love those moments when Micah snuggles. Within minutes, Micah was sound asleep, gently snoring.
I carefully stood up, slowly moved to the crib and gently lay Micah on the mattress. I slowly inched my way towards the door…and the wailing began again! I walked back to the crib and reached in to touch Micah. He immediately quieted down, took my hand and started smiling. Micah just wanted me to be close – moment number two. I rubbed his back and he slowly relaxed and put his head down. I gently worked my way back to the chair and sat down again, hoping that just having my presence in the room would be sufficient. Micah fussed for a moment until he realized he could play peak-a-boo with me through the crib.
After several rounds of peek-a-boo, I decided that it was time to try and sing Micah to sleep. I started with You Are My Sunshine and then I moved on to The Rose. Within moments, Micah was quiet, lying still and sucking his thumb. (As an aside – is anyone else picky about grammar? It drives me crazy when people misuse the words “lay” and “lie” or “then” and “than” or “accept” and “except.” Not to mention when people misspell definitely – there is no “a” people! I admit it – if you blog and I’m reading it, I am noticing your grammatical and spelling errors. When I review my OWN blog posts, typos, missing words and failure to use parallel grammatical structure drive me bonkers. I even try to avoid ending sentences in prepositions, and it drives me crazy that I have allowed contractions to sneak into my blog posts. And yes, Dad, you did actually catch a typo once before I had a chance to correct it! But I digress.)
This time, once Micah was quietly nestled in, I decided to be smart – I thought I would wait a bit longer to ensure he was fast asleep. Micah’s room is quite small – the glider is in the back corner of Micah’s room and runs perpendicular to his crib (forming an “L” shape). The ottoman sits in front of the glider just next to his crib. While I waited for Micah to fall asleep, I sat back in the glider, closed my eyes and slowly started to drift off myself. And then, it happened – moment number three. I noticed this very faint whisper of a tickle by my feet, and when I opened my eyes, there was Micah’s little arm sticking out through the slats of his crib reaching out to touch my toe. He just needed to know that I was still there. I pointed my toes towards him so that his hand could brush up against my foot, as if to say “yes, baby, I’m here.” He slowly started to fall asleep, intermittently checking for me. It took another fifteen minutes, but he finally fell into that deep sleep that allowed me to quietly creep out of his room.
What I want to remember tonight is that there is a little boy upstairs who is just comforted by my mere presence – reaching out of a crib to brush my toe brings him a world of comfort. How incredible is that? I hope he knows how full my heart is with love for him, and that I am filled with joy just knowing he is there, too.
That’s beautiful! Those moments are so wonderful. Around that age (8-9 months), my perfect sleeper had to be retrained all over again. I highly recommend reading “How To Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems” by Ferber. Every six months or so since then, we’ve had to do more sleep training. As much as I enjoyed the 45+ minute bedtime, I realized I needed to be able to put her to bed within about 10 minutes of the bath most nights. Good luck! I loved reading about him tickling your toes.