Last night, Ankur went to dinner with his cohort to celebrate one of them matching for his spinal cord fellowship. 

He was hesitant to leave at first. I’ve never done bedtime for both the kids by myself yet. So I think he was worried that it’d be a challenge. 

And, yeah, I knew the first time would probably be a little tricky. 

But I also knew I needed to do it because I’m going to have to figure this out soon enough. 

Ankur’s working an overnight next week, so I considered this my trial run. 🙂 

We just got these new security cameras (that we’re using as baby monitors) and so I was able to keep an eye on the baby while putting Ishu down. 

The baby was out within 5 minutes. Barely rocked him to sleep and he was down by 7:15pm. 

I came out of the room and started Ishu’s bedtime routine. 

1.5 hours later, my big kid was out.

It took a lot longer with him. 

But I wasn’t all that frustrated by it. 

There have been nights when it takes an hour or more to get him to sleep. And some of those nights feel hard and I just want to scream, “CLOSE YOUR EYES AND GET IT TOGETHER!” 

But I’m not spending my nights curled up next to this kid anymore. 

He sleeps in the other room with his papa right now.

So, I settled in and appreciated the 1:1 time we were getting. 

We read four stories. (We’ve been going through these Mr. Men series and he’s loving ’em). 

When the lights were out and the sound machine was on, I told him a story – as requested – about two talking micromachines. (I gotta give myself a pat on the back for that one. I made something up about a blue micromachine and a red micromachine falling in love and getting married and having two purple micromachine babies and somehow paralleled it to our lives and he thought it was pretty darn great). 

Every time I inched away, he’d inch a little closer. 

When I tried to move my hand a bit, he’d pull it under his head to make sure I wasn’t leaving.

It was a reminder how much this kid has needed his 1:1 time with mama. And, even when I do read 1-2 books with him each night, sometimes he needs a little more. And I was so happy to give that to him. 

I mean, let’s be real. I’m still going to have nights when I want to pull my hair out and wish he would fall asleep faster. 

But it was real nice to take a moment that could have been frustrating and view it as an opportunity to fill his cup (and mine too). 

Hope you are all having a beautiful week. It’s gloomy over here in Chicago with rain in the forecast for this afternoon. Ishu’s real excited about it because he’s got his new umbrella and rainboots. He’s really looking forward to all the puddles he’s gonna stomp in on the way home. Ha. 

Have a good one 🙂