As I sat in the chair in Baby Girl’s room last night, waiting for her to fall asleep, I began to reflect on how big she’s getting. There will come a time when she no longer wants me to sit in the chair in her room until she falls asleep. When she will not demand me to Rock! the instant I say “It’s sleepy time!” and continue to demand it all the way down the hall, into her room, into her bed, turn the music on and the lights off. She won’t say Rock! one more time as I lean down and kiss her forehead and respond “I always do.” One of these days we won’t be watching the stars on the ceiling from the ladybug nightlight and we won’t be listening to the strains of Mozart and Bach. A little hand won’t sneak out from under the covers to say “No Mama! Don’t go” if I get up to leave before she’s fully asleep. The Peppa Pig sheets will be replaced by something more grown up and it will be a twin bed instead of an adorable toddler one. I look at the mural of the owl and the tree on her wall and wonder how old she’ll be when she wants to paint over it, and if I’ll cry when she does. And if she’ll roll her eyes at me because I do. Will the chandelier her Grandma bought still hang? What will become of the Dr. Suess framed prints? Or the pink owl lamp her Grandma and I bought the day we learned she was a girl?
Already I look back at the days gone by. I remember the agony of breastfeeding in the middle of the night, when she wouldn’t or couldn’t latch on. I remember the tears and the struggle to understand when she wouldn’t stop crying because of acid reflux. The sweet sweet smell of her little baby head next to my cheek. How itty bitty she was and how I had no idea what to do with her. How long it seemed to take for her to learn to sit up on her own, to stand, and finally to walk. When feeding her a bottle was the most precious moment of time. I remember when she started climbing out of her crib and we switched her to a toddler bed and she slept on the floor for months out of protest.
Someday she will no longer ask for hugs and kisses during dinner time. She won’t take my face in her hands and look inquisitively at me and say “Ma? Ma?” just to be sure I’m listening. She’ll stop asking if I’m ok every time I cough, because I do the same thing to her. One of these days I’ll get to take a shower or a bath without her wanting to do it, too, and maybe I won’t even really notice when that day comes. I’ll get to eat without having to share. I won’t have to sneak chocolate when she can’t see. I’ll be at work in my office and she won’t want to be in there with me. She’ll have more important things to do. Someday she’ll want to go ride without me watching, she’ll want the keys to my car. She’ll want her own phone and her own computer. She’ll want to sleep til noon and we’ll have arguments over nothing and everything.
So, Baby Girl, I will be happy to sit in your room every night until you fall asleep even though some days I am so tired myself I feel like crying. When the nights are tough and it takes you an hour to fall asleep instead of twenty minutes, I’ll watch the stars on the ceiling, I’ll play Words with Friends with my Mom on my phone, I’ll listen to Bach and Beethoven. And I will remind myself that with each passing day we get closer to the time when you won’t want me there, or need me there at all. Your room is my favorite room in the house, after all. Every single thing in it, including you, was chosen or made with love and prayers. So go to sleep, Lovie, Mama is right here, rocking.
