Every night, we help Isaac brush his teeth and supervise Suzannah brushing hers. We read stories; sometimes we all start together, but then usually Matt reads with Isaac and I read with Suzannah, or she reads to me. We coax them to go to the bathroom one more time. If we manage to wrap up dinner and get everyone in jammies early, sometimes we have a Family Dance Party and rock out to the Ramones or Black Keys. (Last night, we did not wrap up dinner particularly early, but it was Friday night, so when our kids donned their puffy vests and sunglasses over their pajamas and requested music, we left the kitchen messes along and bounced around in the family room.)
But tucking the kids into bed is the point at which their routines diverge. Since the very day of his birth, Isaac has generally been quite agreeable about going to bed. People who insist on labeling babies and children as either “good” or “bad” sleepers would probably put him solidly in the “good” category. When he was only a day old, Kyanne asked in an e-mail if I’d gotten any sleep, and I replied, "Hey! I actually DID get sleep -- snuggled the kiddo next to me and we slept really well in between feedings. I feel pretty okay this morning, just sore and very grungy.” A far cry from Suzannah’s first few days, which found us both crying all night long. (Although lest you think I’m romanticizing Round Two of motherhood too much, later that day I wrote, “My house is a wreck and I haven't eaten anything except Suzannah's leftover fishsticks and my hair is all greasy and I'm crying all the time.”)
When Isaac was born, I didn’t even try to get him to sleep in his crib. We had a crib when Suzannah was born because I thought all babies were supposed to have a crib, and then she wound up sleeping in our bed every night because the crib apparently came coated in battery acid and scorpions. After awhile she consented to taking naps there, but we co-slept every night until she was easily a year old or so. I didn’t mind, because I figured the time would pass quickly enough (and I was right; the fact that my baby girl is in second grade is mind-blowing to me) and also because I sleep better when I am curled up against someone, too, and I am an adult. I just couldn’t quite bring myself to think of it as something we needed to fix.
(Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to categorize adults the way we do babies and children. We talk about “easy” babies and “high needs” babies and “highly sensitive” babies...what kind of adult am I? Most assuredly not the “easy” kind.)
When Isaac was born, I thought I’d just skip those first desperate nights of trying to put him down and crying because he wouldn’t sleep anywhere but in my arms, and we did quite well. I was tired, sure, because Isaac also liked to eat at three o’clock in the morning, but rolling over to feed a hungry but not-quite-awake baby is much easier than getting out of bed to do it. I thought I was doing myself a huge favor by figuring this out so much sooner the second time around, and I was ready. I was in it for the long haul. But then Isaac decided, at six months of age, that he rather preferred his space -- he slept soundly when I put him down in the early evening hours, and he didn’t demand to come into bed with us. He was content to sleep alone for most of the night. It was quite an adjustment; where Suzannah had always required elaborate bedtime routines, Isaac was clearly done with the day and seemed to want us to just go away already and leave him alone. And while I realized this was something I was “supposed” to celebrate, in truth I grieved a bit.
Now, as a four-year-old, that child will run over to hug me goodnight and I’ll hold on a little too long, and he’ll say, “Mommy, let me go! I have to go to bed now.” When I creep into his room before I go to bed, to kiss him and make sure he’s breathing (will I always do this?), sometimes he says, sleepily but firmly, “Mommy, I need to go to sleep now.” Last night, he hollered through the wall during storytime with Suzannah. I poked my head into his room to ask what in the world was wrong, and he said, “Stop talkin'. I’m tryin’ to go to sleep."
By contrast, I’m not one hundred percent convinced that Suzannah goes to sleep at all. After we read together, she negotiates for reading time on her own. I suspect that even after we tell her it’s Lights Out, Young Lady, she fakes us out and after we go to sleep, she pulls out her book again. She doesn’t like her room dark. Isaac insists on sleeping with his bedroom door closed, and while he does like his Yoda Christmas lights, I think that’s more about the fact that they’re Yoda Christmas lights, which, yes, we let him keep up around his window. Suzannah not only needs the Yoda lights, but she requests the lamp on as well, and only recently did she begin to allow us to turn off the hallway light before she fell asleep. And she leaves the door open. It’s rare that I’m home alone at night, but if Matt is at a show or traveling for work and I go to bed alone, I leave the door open and the hall light on, too.
Isaac hugs me hard, gives me a sweet sloppy kiss, and then lets me go. This is exactly why I always wanted to write about what it felt like to hold him in the dark as an infant, rocking him to sleep -- as if reading about it later could return those moments to me.
Suzannah clings to me still, makes a game of bedtime. There is always too much giggling. One of us says, “Let me go!” and the other pretends to consider: “Hm...no.” This can go on for a long time. Finally, I untangle myself from her grasp and say, “Okay, seriously, go to sleep.” But half the time we wind up giggling in her bed for five more minutes after the last seriously.
I’m quite sure this is not a good habit; I’m also quite sure I don’t care.
Last night she was up too late, and we were both tired, so when she asked if I would snuggle with her for awhile I said, “Okay, but no silly snuggling tonight, okay? Let’s just cuddle for awhile. It’s so late.”
“Okay,” she said. She moved over to make room for me on the bed, and I crawled in next to her, slipped an arm over her. She tossed her leg over mine. I closed my eyes and just basked in this rare still moment with my girl. She fell asleep almost instantly. She’s so big now, so grown, but she’s also small enough that her body still thinks of mine as home, digging her toes into my shins, flinging an arm across my stomach. In fact, when she does sleep with me, she’s more likely to sleep with her limbs splayed, twining with mine. (Alone, she prefers to cocoon herself in covers with just the tip of her nose poking out. I’m the same way.)
We stayed like that for awhile. And I remembered nights of gazing at her face, finally asleep in the crook of my arm. I felt crazy with exhaustion and love so often, but even at the time I knew those moments would pass and that I would miss them. We romanticize so much of babyhood, I think, editing out the fatigue and sheer drudgery of parenting. But even now, far away from the days of rocking my babies in the dark, of sleeping with them against my chest, there are moments that take me right back. And they are gifts -- a little bitter, but very sweet.
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