I was challenged to write a blog about my "Tales From The Crib" by the folks at Dropcam
To learn more about camera and their competition for the best stories from the crib contact Tiffany
at: tpham@dropcam.com
Several months ago I wrote this blog about our family and our sleep schedule. It was a hard time for our family: we were in transit from living as a family of four to moving in with my parents for a few months while my husband was away. Now that we're back as a family of four, we've had to figure out how to become a family again, and how to make schedules work, how to include dad in our lives again, and how to transition two children (not in cribs) into a new room with new beds in a new place. It wasn't easy.
Right off the bat my husband took over bedtime, honestly, it was a huge relief. I had been tired of putting these kids to bed night, after night, after night. By the end of the day I was just exhausted, and to have a bedtime fight or struggle or kid pile in my bed, I just didn't have the energy. Now though, the boys' routine is pretty set, and while we still do cuddle them at bed time, things have gotten much smoother and the boys look forward to winding down with Daddy every night.
One night, I was "in charge of bedtime". After we finished reading our books, I turned off the reading light, turned on the night light and started their bedtime music. Theo fell asleep instantly. Henrik on the other hand was wide awake. I don't do bedtime anymore so I was in the mood to cuddle Hank as he drifted off to sleep. He had other plans though. As I started to wrap my arms around him and wiggled around to get comfortable in a toddler bed, he looked up at me, "Um, Mom? You know, if you are tired" he used his hands to gesture at me, I kind of chuckled, "you could just go and lay in your bed." "Oh, I'm okay, I can lay with you for a few minutes. I don't have any chores to do and I don't get to be in charge of bedtime that often, so I'll lay here" I replied. I thought I gave an answer that he'd want to hear: This kid always wants to snuggle with me, or with his dad. He hates being alone and it's been a confidence boosting few months so we could get this kid to stay in his bed and not come crawling in to OUR bed every night. I came up with a solution: it's now his job to wake us and let us know when the sun comes up. And he has to do it from his room because he sees the sun first. Genius. I don't know how I came up with it, the words just came out of my mouth and he went with it.
"Well, Mom? Uhhhh, see, it's just that I've got it handled here," Henrik said. "Huh? You've got what handled?" I was totally confused. "Bedtime," he said, as he sat up in the bed and moved his legs towards his chest. His confident head bobbing and eye blinking thew me for a loop. "Soooo, you are telling me that you don't want me to lay here?" I asked, dreading the answer. He nodded. Now I sat up. I didn't know what to say. I didn't know what to do, "So, you want me to go downstairs while you stay up here and sleep by yourself?" He nodded again. I just sat there with my mouth open. "Um, OK. I guess I will leave then." Henrik smiled and then said, "I've got my dream catcherrrrr, my music, myyyy snowflake (my old teddy bear), and I'm going to be a knight and I'll protect Theo."
My heart melted as it stopped for a second. I was seriously speechless. Henrik kept nodding at me. I smiled and told him I loved him. I tucked him in, walked to the door and blew him a kiss. "I love you" I whispered as I looked back at him. "I love you too mom" he answered. I went to my room and sat on my bed. It was 7:45. I really didn't know what to do. Eric was gone, I was all caught up on the Olympics and I couldn't watch our shows because Eric wasn't around. I messed around on my phone for a second and then I heard movement coming from the boys' room. Instead of being all "angry mom" I sneaked over to see what was going on.
Henrik was sitting on the edge of the bed with a pirate spy glass. Part of me wanted to catch him in the act because I just realized I had been pushed out of the room so he could play. But the other part of me wanted to watch. I kept quiet as he looked left and right, and left and right through a spyglass in the dark. Then he started to talk, "There's nothing over there. Nope..... not... over... there..... you're safe Theodor". He then tucked himself into bed, put his head on his pillow and snuggled into his sleeping brother (they each have a toddler bed but they wanted to be closer to one another so we pushed them together).
I was shocked. I was wrong. He didn't push me out to play, he pushed me out to be a big kid. Here he was, Henrik the Knight and protector of his brother, and no longer the little boy that needed his mom to hold him to fall asleep. I smiled as I walked down stairs in disbelief, but my heart hurt a little bit. I know, there are a lot of wonderful things happening in this moment that I should be celebrating, and believe me, I was, but I was also in shock at how, in an instant, Henrik didn't need me any more.
That night before I went to bed, I found the boys fast asleep holding hands as they snuggled together in their beds. I went over and tucked them both in, gave them a kiss and found the spy glass digging into Henrik's back. I picked it up and placed in on his bed stand. He'd need it tomorrow. I smiled. I leaned over to give him one more kiss and when I looked at him after I placed a soft kiss on his forehead, he looked different to me. He was older, he was confident, he was proud.
And so was I.
