I’ve always been a stickler for bedtime. I spend all day having fun with the girls and cherish my alone time in the evening, so I try to get them both to bed at a decent hour. In my ideal world, bedtime would go smoothly every single night, but as most parents know, those occurrences are few and far between.
This summer has thrown our bedtime schedule for a bit of a loop. Although we have blackout shades to keep the room nice and dark, they are fooling no one in our house. The girls know that it’s still light when they go to bed and they use it as an excuse to stay up way past their bedtime. I’ve been trying to put Avery down first and then Harlan an hour later because putting them to bed at the same time has been backfiring lately.
While Avery has been going down fine on her own, it’s Harlan that has been the tougher one to get down. For the past couple of weeks she has been finding a way to get into our bed and “just fall asleep.” I’ll usually be in bed watching television and MacKay will be in the living room watching his show. Harlan will come into my room and ask to cuddle with me and then five minutes later she is talking up a storm.
Harlan has always been very vocal, but as she gets older, she has become super chatty. She wants to talk about anything and everything. Last night Har got into my bed and made herself comfortable under the covers.
“Mom, where am I going to be when I am your age?”
“Where are you going to be?”
“Yeah, when I’m your age.”
“Probably living in your own house and I will live in my house, just like Mimi and Grandaddy live away from me now.”
“No, mom. I want you to live with me forever.”
::smiling:: “Okay Har, I’ll gladly live with you forever.”
She smiled as she put her head on her pillow and slowly fell asleep. That was all she needed for the night.
I know that I value my alone time and sometimes it does get me frustrated when she doesn’t go to bed when I tell her to, but after last night’s conversation, I realized that there is a silver lining in everything. In a few short years, Harlan won’t want to lay in my bed with me just to talk. She’s going to want to sit in her room and talk on her phone to her friends. She will be four in a couple of months and I look back and think of how quickly these four years have passed. Too quickly.
How can I get upset with a little girl that just wants to cuddle up next to me and talk? I can’t. No matter how precious and necessary we think our alone time is, those little (and rare) moments that we get with our child when we least expect it are so much more valuable.
