Bless His Heart

If you are from the South, you know that the phrase, "bless his heart" will be followed by something unflattering.

While my son is adorable and cute and funny and a miracle and absolutely 100% wonderful, bless his heart, the poor thing just cannot fall asleep easily.

To say that sleep is a battle in our house is an understatement. It's more like a bloody massacre where mom ends up half dead and only sometimes victorious.

My son, bless his heart, fight sleep like no one I've ever see before. I suppose I could take that as a compliment meaning that I am just tons of fun and all. Eddie could be dead tired, barely able to hold his eyes open, but he'll turn and look at the dog or start talking or biting or laughing or whatever... just to not go to sleep.

Then up until just a week ago or so, I'd put the poor boy down to bed after he was already asleep and sometime between 5 minutes and 45 minutes after he went to bed, he'd be awake again, crying. Why? Because he couldn't feel me or my shirt. Bless his little heart.

Lately Ed and I have decided that he can just sleep in our arms until we go to bed. Eddie gets sleep and I get sleep because he sleeps for longer stretches at night when we do this. If the people we knew in real life knew we did this we would get lectured 1000 times over. I know they would mean well, but...

We do what works for us. I think that parenthood is at least partly about survival -- especially in these early years. Eddie will not sleep with us forever. I promise that he'll be out of our bed, at the latest, by the time he hits puberty.:)

And just so you knkow... the picture is from a recent naptime.