(no subject)
Tabitha at 33 months is a screamer and fighter, a wailer and crier, a kicker and runner, but also a kisser and hugger, a welcome-home-greeter, a sharer and saver, an endless complimenter, a nurturer, an imaginer, and a miss-you-whenever-you-leaver.
She threw such a fit last night about bedtime that her dad took over, a great punishment in her mind, although it results in faster sleeping for everyone (she throws fits 9 nights out of ten, goes quietly the other one; 2 or 3 of the fit-nights are extreme enough to prompt intervention), but then woke around 10:30, calling out to me: "Mama? Mama!" "What's the matter," I asked quietly, tiptoeing in to check and trying not to wake her sister. "I need someone to sleep with me. I need you. I'm lonely." It only took about 4 minutes of whispering a plotless story about her family into her hair, lying on her second pillow with her little feet curled against my leg, for her to be contentedly snoring again, and off I went to bed myself, knowing I'd be joined there soon enough. Somewhere in the past few months they've traded places: Evanny rarely comes into our bed before morning anymore, most of the time showing up to climb on top of whoever looks the most tolerant sometime after daybreak, but Tab comes in almost every dark-of-morning, just like Evvy used to. The little feet patter down the hall, the little figure appears beside the bed, I open the covers, she crawls in alongside me, and we go back to sleep, usually with her holding my arm to her chest, again like her sister used to. She has moved past asking to nurse, and only very rarely asks for apples in the night (a request I can usually deflect long enough for her to fall back asleep again); mostly I get a few tosses and turns, and then I wake up with the light, or to Evanny's footfalls, to find her little face peacefully crumpled or blissfully spilled across my pillow, an arm flung over my chest or a leg or two hooked over my lower body. This morning, watching her sleep, revelling in the moment of sweet peace, and already missing her sister's sweet sleeping face, which I see so much less often even at the still-sweet, still-close precious age of four, I was blessed by one of the most amazing fairies of baby-land, almost certainly for the last time, as she's spending all her days and some nights diaperless these days and is already registered for school next fall: the flickering of a sleep-smile danced across her dream-gentled face.