Rock a bye, baby

Not that Drew’s a baby anymore. Not really. At almost three, glimpses of ‘baby’ are harder and harder to find.

I do lay down with him for bedtime every night, still. He only just stopped nursing to sleep a few weeks ago. That transition seemed to drag on forever, but in the end, I am really thrilled with how natural and gentle and beautifully it all wound down. So now we turn on our blue lamp, we turn on our “moona” (moon night light) and we crawl into bed together. Some nights Drew talks about the moon or his day, some nights he plays with his Dora or Diego doll, and some nights he just immediately cuddles up to me and rests his head on my arm and whispers, in that warm, wet toddler whisper, “go seep, mommy. go seep.” and his eyes close and he drifts off, my baby once more, if only for a fleeting minute.

I get a lot of “he has to learn to go to sleep on his own!” and similar warnings, all with dire consequences should we fail to teach him to sleep “properly”. And I am just going to call it all Bunk. There is little in my day more precious than those minutes I spend with him, hearing about his day, him dragging my arm around him just so, right beneath his ribs, his arranging my head so that we lay together, cheek to cheek, when every other thing in life seems so small, so insignificant. When the new baby arrives, I know I will treasure those moments even more, and when he grows out of the need and desire to have me there with him as he finds slumber, I will not for one second regret that we didn’t force him to think that his days had to end all alone in a big bed by himself.