It was a typical day of late followed by a magical evening that sort of just unfolded and I had the good sense (if I do say so myself) to recognize it and let it happen. L went down at 7 with a blowout and no bath. Don't worry, I wiped her up good, she was just wiped (hee hee) so I swaddled her up and put her down. H had taken a really long nap today because I fell asleep so he woke me up instead of the other way around. Oops. Usually I bath and bed them at the same time, but I decided to let him stay up "late." It had been an afternoon of me counting to three and giving him two choices and seemingly constant not-fun interaction, or rather me talking and him not responding, so I decided the evening would go another way. No choices for him to make, nothing "unfun" for him to do, just peaceful mommy and H time. If he wanted it, he got it (thank goodness he doesn't even know to ask for anything crazy yet). I even proactively offered him a treat - which we shared - after dinner - I know, crazy.
We Skyped with "the girls" and Auntie C, read some books, did bath. For the first time in a long time it was just me and him, him and me, doing our old routine together. We brushed teeth, read another book cuddled up on the couch, and then he didn't want to go to bed. This is a fairly new development because we have recently transitioned from sitting in the hallway outside his room while he goes to sleep (which started months ago as sitting next to his bed) to just putting him to bed and leaving - which means going a whole 10 feet down the hall to the couch or the dining room area. And, yes, he knows. So we've had many nights of him coming out several times, sometimes less, and being put back to bed. There's laughing (mostly on his part), crying, yelling, threatening, silence, all sorts of stuff on any given night. So, tonight, I decided we needed a night off from this too.
I carried my big boy into his room like he was my baby - because he still is. I danced with him in the dark and sang (sadly for him, even with all of his Music Together training, he still considers the noise coming out of my mouth "singing") and then sat on the chair with him in the dark with his head on my shoulder as his body got a bit tired and relaxed and then I put him in bed and sat by his bed and rubbed his back for a bit. He didn't utter a word for almost all of this time. It took a while and there's lots of stuff I could have been doing, and there's fear that I've backpedaled our "progress" on bedtime, but there's nothing I would have rather done tonight, and I dare say the same for him. He's still my baby and we both needed a night off from pretending he's not.
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