A couple of nights ago I was waking up from my usual bed time routine with the girls. As I stood in the bathroom prepping myself to wash my face I thought to myself…

Yes, sometimes it is sucky that the only way our youngest, Elysse, will fall asleep is if I lay down beside her. Every night she likes to snuggle up real close to me. Her face will be about an inch from mine and she’ll whisper to me “I love you” and then I’ll whisper it back. Then she turns around and asks for tickles, which is really a back rub and then a tummy rub. She’ll giggle and then face me again and close and open her eyes. We go on like this for awhile until I succumb to the exhaustion and zonk our. I never know who falls asleep first, me or her. I wake up usually an hour later to find her fast asleep and I carefully get up and out of the bed and slowly leave the room. This has been our bedtime routine for almost two years now. And as I stood there in the restroom I thought and said out loud, I wouldn’t change this for anything. Sure some nights it’s hard because all I want to do is be done with the day and finally get some me time. But then I think, one day she won’t want me there anymore, so, sucky or not, I’m not changing this one bit. I’m sure that moment will come all on its own.

Which brings me to the article from The Gottman Institute that I came across on Facebook. It talked about this very thing, how one day these moments that can sometimes be draining or tiring will be gone and we will miss them.

I don’t want to miss those moments and regrets when I look back. I want to look back and smile, a secret smile of knowing that I treasured each of those moments.

And just like Elysse has that bed time routine, Celeste has her own. While she is a very good sleeper and zonks out way before both of us, I know that what she needs is time spent listening to her stories. She has such a beautiful and inquisitive mind. She nothing more than to share what happened at school and ask questions and interact verbally with us. And it’s true how the saying goes… if you won’t listen to your kids now when these small things are huge to them, who do you think they’ll share the big deal stories with? Because everything is a big deal, to them at least. We should be mindful of this.

Here’s the article I mentioned earlier

You’re going to miss it