The Last One

My children are ROCK STARS at sleeping.  Charlie was sleeping through the night at three months with only three nights of training and was a serious napper.  When he got to be old enough, he would point to the stairs and say, "night night?" when he wanted a nap, which was often.  We thought he was good, and then Lucy came along.  She was sleeping through the night at TWO MONTHS and taking GLORIOUS naps.  And as I type this, my husband is sawing, banging, and nail-gunning upstairs.  I have checked on both kids and they are still sound asleep.  I am not sure why my kids are such great sleepers, other than the fact that they were c-section babies, and the nurses in the hospital told us that, by virtue of that fact, they would be.  Whatever - I'm not questioning it!

But for some reason, Lucy woke up at 3 AM.  She cried out just a little and then stopped.  About ten minutes later, she did it again.  I know I could have left her and she would have been fine, but by that point I was awake and thinking I could do with a little snuggle.  So I tiptoed in and lifted her out of her crib.  I sat down in the rocker fully expecting her to whine or squirm, but she did neither.  She just let me hold her.  She likes it when I sing to her, and she especially likes it when I replace the words with her name ("Edelweiss" from The Sound of Music works great for this).  So I just sang to her.  After about five minutes, I rotated her so that she was lying on my shoulder like she is in the picture above, and she didn't fight it like I expected.  She just snuggled her head down and fell asleep.  And as I sat there rocking her, I thought, this is probably the last time I will ever rock my baby to sleep.

You see, Lucy is our last baby.  I have written a blog post in my head about our decision to stop after two, but upon reflection, I feel like it's one I really just don't want to share.  I will just say that it was an extremely difficult decision.  And as I sat rocking and humming to my blissfully sleeping baby girl, I was overcome by the fact that I will probably never do this again.  Oh, she will let me rock her when she is sick, and she will let me cuddle her every once in a while, but this exact thing will probably never happen again.  And there is some sadness there.

But mainly, there is joy.  I don't know if I've ever seen a happier, sweeter, more precious little girl anywhere.  And I still have 16 more years with her under my roof.