Watching the flutter

One of the things I took a hard line on when I became a parent was bedtime routine. I've heard so many stories about nightmarish routines that take hours and involve things such as holding hands, sleeping on the floor, rocking them to sleep then gingerly trying to move them, sitting at their bedside watching them until they fall asleep...none of which are bad things, but I really wanted to be able to have a routine of bath, books, bed. Period. I simply value that decompression "me" time I obtain once the kids are in bed, so this was one thing I knew I could be...I had to be strong about. I had seen first hand what my dear little sister put my father and step-mother through, and I vowed it would never be me. I'm not going to lie, they can manipulate me to do things...did you see the post about Maya's routine? But all can be done, and I'm out the door within a minute. All of my kids have always been able to fall asleep on their own, and for this I consider myself lucky.

So we had a slumber party last night, and everything went great. One of the pitfalls of probably any slumber party is the lack of necessary sleep, of which all of my kids are suffering from today. I scooted the girls off to gymnastics this morning, and when I returned home Nolans shear exhaustion was obvious. I informed this child (that hasn't napped since he was 1 1/2) that he needed to take a rest. Because of his unwillingness to race right up and take a nap, I offered him my bed....and to make the offer a bit more appealing, I snuggled in with him. He tried to chat, and bounce and make tents with the covers and do anything that would keep him from falling asleep, but before long he was quiet...still a bit fidgety, but he was finally giving in to the tiredness.

I couldn't see his eyes from my angle, I could simply see the flutter of his eyelashes. They were my indicator as to just how close he was to that most needed sleep. I watched them quickly flutter as he glanced around the room at the light on ceiling, I watched them slow into heavy blinks, and eventually they were still. So I guess one of the things that I don't get to appreciate as a "hard line" parent on the bedtime routine is the simple pleasure of watching your child fall asleep. To see my high energy little boy gently rub his eyebrow as he drifted off to sleep was precious and I think need to take the opportunity every once and awhile to simply watch the flutter.