Sweet Surrender (of a whole new kind!)

After dinner you are mine. No TV, no music, no chatting in the background. Just you, me and the peace and quiet of the upstairs. You are fed, cleaned, you look the picture of contentment…a toothless sleepy grin is my prize. I know the best way to get you to sleep is to leave you in your crib when you are drowsy so you can drift off. And you have shown us you can do that easily. But I take you on my shoulder and we walk from room to room, so you can continue to form your pictures. Pictures, which will one day, form your earliest memories. You look around, alert and bird-like, with your head bobbing ever so little, cooing at random. Slowly, you nuzzle and nudge your way into that favorite spot of yours where I can feel your breath on my neck. Your arm finds the comfortable perch of my forearm to hang off from (Something that you learned to do in your second month. When you were a newborn you slept like a koala with your hands curled tight underneath you). You are tucked into the crevice of my shoulder forming a perfect semi-globe, your little butt supported by my arm. There is a dull ache in my shoulder, one that keeps growing with your growing weight. One, which I have long ceased to pay heed to. As I arch my neck to make more room for you, I can feel that slightest shift of your weight. You are asleep, I can tell before I do my customary walk to the mirror to check if you are indeed, asleep. There is something infinitely trusting, infinitely innocent in that final give to sleep. I lay you down in your crib.

This has done me more good than it has done you, baby! Sleep tight. The pleasure, as they say, was all mine.

Now, if only ever night were this idyllic.