Some napping thoughts ...

An excerpt from a post I started writing over a year ago, but never finished ...

Today Elijah woke up screaming less than an hour into his nap, and it was quickly obvious that he was not going to be able to calm down and get back to sleep on his own. (This is not normal.) I went in and picked him up and we sat in his rocker for a while so that he could calm down. (Also not normal - going in is usually pointless.) This time it seemed that he really did just need a hug, but by the time the post-crying gasping and hiccuping stopped he just fell asleep on my shoulder. Now, Elijah is usually quite a good sleeper, but he has always been an "I sleep in my bed" kind of kid, so I could probably count the number of times that he has fallen asleep in my arms on one hand (well, at least since he was about three weeks old and we stopped waking him every two hours to feed him). On the one hand, the rare privilege of holding a sleeping baby is wonderful, especially when that baby is quickly becoming a little boy and you know you aren't going to get many more opportunities to just sit there and rock him. On the other hand, he is getting awfully heavy. After a few minutes my hands were falling asleep and strange muscles started to ache. (Apparently those muscles were already a little over worked by the littler baby I'm always carrying around now.) I knew I couldn't sit in that little rocking chair for another hour or more and hold him, but I also knew I couldn't get up without waking him ... of course, I had to get up, and he did wake up when I put him back in bed, and started crying again, but this time he did get back to sleep on his own, and reasonably quickly. Whew.

Anyway, the whole nap experience (besides just making me tired) for some reason made me think about how much our lives revolve around Elijah's bedtimes.

I remember sitting in that rocking chair holding a much littler Elijah, and while things around here have changed a lot in some ways, some things haven't changed a bit - that last statement still rings very true. Elijah, Molly, and I still exist in a very regimented world that is dictated by nap times and meal times and bed time. Elijah has always been very dependent on a consistent schedule, and Molly has not been much more flexible. Mostly, I am content with it for two reasons: 1) it makes my kids happy, and 2) this stage of their lives won't last forever. I do try to be as consistent as possible with their schedule, and it does mean that we miss out on some things. But it also means that they generally sleep really well, and that they go to sleep on their own, and that they are pretty happy when they're awake. Yes, we still have a hard time getting to the grocery store and back in the space between nap time and dinner, and doing anything fun with friends means missing a nap and major disruption to their day. And yes, we don't get to do much of anything in the evenings (they go to bed around 7 pm, so we're pretty much home for the evening!) including church or bible studies or anything we would do together. But that's for now. In the big picture this will be a short time. There will be time for other things, and I'm sure that very soon we will be running around, busy with this and that, and we will sometimes miss the quiet steadiness of having two naps and early bedtimes. When I wish for other things, like the freedom to run a quick errand, I just have to remember to enjoy this season for what it is. Babies don't last forever.