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Thursday, October 18, 2012

And then I blinked and my babies tripled in size.



In July I sat down to write a post about the "lovey wars" that take place in our house during our sleep routine.  Three times a day, I would sit in the rocking chair in the nursery with Beckett and Kiernan on my lap and feed them their bottles before putting them to bed.  The peace and stillness of the room at that time was only ever disturbed by the battle of the lovies, arms flying around while little hands grabbed at pieces of fleece and satin.

But just 3 months later, times have changed.  There isn't much snuggling that goes on before nap time anymore. In fact, it's really just a bit less chaotic than the rest of the day.  The 3 of us walk to their room, hand-in-hand.  I sit in the rocking chair and pull Beckett onto my lap as Kiernan goes to pick out a book for us to read.  I read as much of each page as they'll allow, before someone turns the page.  We point to things on the page, name colors and animals, and when we finish a book, Kiernan slides off of my lap to choose another one.  Three times a day, we settle down for sleep by using this routine.  It's certainly not as calm and peaceful as our pre-sleep routine used to be, but it still feels good to have a lap full of my sweet boys.


Every once in awhile, when someone is sick or teething, I get to rock them to sleep.  It's amazing to me how much they've grown in the past year.  When Kiernan was coming down with a cold last week, he was having a hard time falling asleep, so I decided to rock him.  As he laid his head on my shoulder, nuzzled his face into the crook of my neck, and wrapped his arm around mine, I soaked in the closeness.  As he curled his long legs under him, I couldn't help but flash back to last fall, when he was a sweet little 6 pound baby.  When his head was tucked under my chin and his knees curled up to his belly, his tiny little bum barely reached my belly button.  It's almost hard for me to remember those times.

 
Beckett (L) and Kiernan (R) in both pictures ... and an exhausted mama in the middle.


It's just funny to reflect back and remember my mix of emotions at that time.  Terribly sleep deprived, I would have paid a million dollars to be able to just put them down to sleep.  But being an experienced mom, I knew how fast time would fly and wanted to freeze time.  To remember how it felt to hold my baby on my chest - this sweet, tiny person that I created (with some help of course), carried, and brought into this world. I think of those emotions and on one hand yearn for that little baby back and on another hand thank the little baby Jesus that I can read my boys some books, plop them in their beds, and say night-night for the next 12 hours.

Life is just like that isn't it?  Always yearning for the past and at the same time looking forward to the future.  Every day I have to remind myself to just breathe and focus on enjoying TODAY.  Except for the shitty days.  Those I try to tuck away as a memory I can laugh at some day.


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