Night and Day

So anyone who has been reading my comments on facebook or reads this blog knows that my wonderful little boy does not like to sleep. To be more accurate he does not like to STAY asleep. I know that in the grand scheme of non sleeping babies he is not the worst. He is probably on the minimum side of non sleepers. He likes to wake up once a night. Sometimes it is at 4:45, sometimes 5:00, or sometimes like last night he likes to shake things up and wake up at 1:53 am. Sorry for the specifics but as anyone who gets up with a baby knows, you know the specific time. When I first hear his cry I try to decipher, can I just cover him up, put the paci back in and maybe he'll go back down? Or is this the more desperate cry saying, "I need to eat! I am a big boy going through a huge growth spurt that has spanned 4 months!!!" It is at this time when I wish that I had the baby whisperer. It is at this time that I wish we had a baby translator. You know, the kind that they have for foreign languages. Wouldn't it be great if I could have Carson cry into the translator and it would read back to me, "he is cold, cover him up." Or "Bad baby dream. Pick him up and put him right back down." or "red alert! this kid is hungry!" But alas, there is no such thing so I will have to continue to use my Mom sense which by the way is seriously diminished with sleep. My exhaustion level is high and sometimes my frustration level follows. I pray for patience and perspective and then I go make a bottle. I put him back down after the bottle and sometimes he goes to sleep and sometimes he cries himself to sleep. I usually then stumble back to bed and mutter to Jared something about how tired I am or how this is never going to end or how baffled I am that he can't sleep through the night. That is the night.



Daytime is a different story. No matter what, my boy wakes up at around 8. He is usually sitting up and talking and bouncing. And when I open the door and he sees me he breaks into the best little baby grin ever and reaches both arms up for me to hold him. It is at that exact moment when I forget all about the night. I pick up that big cuddly boy and just snuggle with him. He buries his head into my shoulder, and wraps his chubby little arm around my neck and all is forgotten. All of the frustration, all of the exhaustion, all of the questions, and all of the worries from the night before just go away. It is at those times when I feel like a Mommy the most. My heart just overflows with unconditional love for this little boy and I know that even if I have to wake up with him every night of his life :) it's ok because my love for him goes beyond exhaustion and frustration. It reaches down into my soul to a place that I didn't even know existed before being a Mom. It is then that I get to experience just a very small glimpse of the love that my heavenly Father has for me. What an unexpected miraculous gift.