Climbing Into Bed

Every night when I put my 1 year old son L to sleep, he has to climb into the bed where I get his sleep sack on. It has become our nightly ritual for quite a while now and I kind of look forward to it now. Even though it takes him a while to climb into bed, I love watching his little body try his hardest to succeed.

What I also notice is he is a very determined little boy. He grasps at the sheets and really works to climb up the bed each night. When he gets up to a specific point, his head is so big that he uses it as a counterweight to plop down. Then he gets the right leverage to finish up the trek.

When he finally makes it to the top, he runs around the bed and sometimes gets under the sheets to pretend to sleep like a big kid in bed. I always tell him he needs to sleep in his crib and thank goodness he doesn’t fight it like my other two kids did when they were toddlers. I sing the same sleep sack song to him as I did my other two kids and we eventually reunite his stuffed dragon he sleeps with nightly into his arms.

The bedtime routine with L has been so enjoyable that it is one of the highlights of my day (and on the weekend there are sometimes two highlights if I get to put him down for nap time). After.a long day at work, I love picking him up from daycare and then eventually putting him to bed after eating dinner and showering. The familiar routine and calmness of it all is what parents dream about and it always leads to long reading sessions and lots of cuddles. Just the way I like it.