Week 37: Hush Little Baby

After a very hectic few weeks filled with packing and moving, I think things have finally settled down.  At least for us adults anyway.  Between Emily starting at a new school, being sick, and Will teething (for real this time, I can actually feel a tooth) and also being sick, it’s been a bit emotional around here.  After being so exhausted from unpacking and whatnot we passed out quickly in our bed, but all of a sudden it seems not quite right.  The sheets won’t stay tucked, the mattress didn’t get put on right, Will’s been waking up almost every half hour, and it’s getting a little, um, crowded.  Solutions?  Ian says he’s had to move the crib twice and not seen it used yet, so maybe it’s time.  And I don’t disagree, I just am not sure if I’m ready to start the bedtime battles after almost nine months of blissfully sleeping cuddled up together.  Plus there’s the whole trouble of not being able to marvel at how wonderful Will is, and how angelic he looks when he’s asleep if he’s passed out in another room.  And I’d hate to wake him up just to tell him how perfect he is.  Did you ever do that?  You spend what seems like hours getting the baby to sleep, but then finally, there they are, blissfully dreaming in your arms, with their little lips pursed together, still sucking away in their sleep, and as you stroke their little fingers and all but burst open with love, you almost, just for a second, want to wake the little babe up just to have one more minute of babyness before all of it slips through your fingers.    

So anyway, to get back on the subject of us not sleeping, we’re giving it a little more time, since the poor guy is teething, this waking up thing might be temporary.  But he is getting to be quite a large little person, so we’ll see what sleeping arrangements we can come up with.  I do feel a greater sense of calm than I did when Emily was this age and thought she would never learn to fall asleep on her own or sleep in her own bed at night.  It does happen, eventually they all do it.  

Emily and I have been reading the Little House series, and sometimes I wish we lived back when things were simpler and after the baby was done sleeping in the parents bed, they moved on to share beds with their siblings.  Maybe it seems weird in today’s world, but really, if you think about, most adults at least have a dog to cuddle up with at night, why to we expect children to be isolated all night long?   At times, other parts of those pioneer days seem appealing… such as the whole children being seen and not heard and not contradicting your parents, a novel concept indeed!  But even though even a day where I didn’t have to deal with whining about how long Emily got to play outside or whether the mittens are itchy and the shirt is too tight would be a vacation.  I think I’ll take all of that over having to deal with things like no running water.  And a baby with no running water… or disposable diapers (shudder).  On second thought, I’d take Emily’s constant monologue and even William’s high pitched scream over that any day.