Slow Down

Tonight was rough.

Auggie excels at everything, except sleep (and eating anything but cookies). Tonight was our first attempt at a new routine where I do not breastfeed him to sleep in his bed, as usual since we’re trying to encourage weaning. Instead, I nursed him as we rocked in the chair in his room. Then, Bryson took him for the next 30 minutes trying to coax him to sleep.

It resulted in a lot of tears and screaming. I was trying to stay preoccupied folding laundry so I wouldn’t intervene, but when I heard little footprints coming my way, a soft “mama,” and a knock on the bedroom door, I couldn’t hold out any longer.

I scooped him up and again tried rocking. He cried and screamed some more. I even offered the “booby,” as he calls it, but he was past the idea of going to bed.

Instead, we went to the living room and played for an hour before I ended up walking him to bed.

It didn’t take long. We typically measure the length of time it takes to walk Auggie to bed by how many Christian songs we had to play before he falls asleep enough for us to put him down in his bed. It only took 1 and 1/2.

However, right as he was asleep, “Slow Down” (not a Christian song that we typically walk him to bed with) came on the iPhone speaker. I wanted badly to change the song knowing that the song occasionally makes me cry, as it’s about children growing older, but I realized that Auggie was so big now that there was no way, I could free one hand and change the song without him waking. So we listened. And I cried.

The first verse always hits me the hardest. There’s a line that says..

Had to crawl before you walked
Before you ran
Before I knew it
You were trying to free your fingers from my hand
‘Cause you could do it on your own now
Somehow

Auggie’s at this stage. He’s finding his independence. He’s determined and capable. Smart and kind. And he makes me so proud and humble all at the same time. I swear at least once a day he does something incredible and new, and reminds me that he’s not going to need me forever.

So in a time where I was cussing the night, frustrated with my lack of sleep and the amount of time I had spent coaxing him to sleep, I’m thankful for the song that makes me cry. It was a great reminder of how much I’m going to miss even the tough parts of being his mom during this early stage of his life.