Lullabies and Early Risers

Miles is an early riser. Usually by 5:30am, I can hear him yapping in his crib. Most of the time, I leave him in there to his "thoughts" for at least a half hour before getting myself up out of bed. I am not an early riser. Neither is my husband. I mean, I enjoy the occasional early wake-up to watch the sunrise and enjoy the stillness of morning before the rest of the neighborhood is up. But this has been the drill for the last 8 months or so. At first, Zach and I tried everything from putting Miles to bed real late, to making him skip naps, to feeding him a lot or nothing before bedtime. We found that nothing really worked. He likes to wake up between 5-6am. That's his thing and we've resigned to going to sleep very early if we want to have a full night's sleep. For me that means getting in bed around 9:30pm, because I don't function well unless I get at least 8 hours of sleep. If I have too many nights in a row where I go out or stay up late, I get cranky and start to break down! Sleep is so important to me!

Well, I didn't go to sleep early last night.....or the night before.....or the night before that. I also haven't had to get up with Miles each morning (thank God!), since my husband and I take turns. But I still wake up when I hear him at 5:30 and it takes me a while to get back to sleep. Anyway, Miles slept until 6:30 this morning! Every now and then he does that and it's like winning the lottery! So I got that extra hour of sleep that is so precious these days. I mean, the sun was already up when I got out of bed to change his diaper. Unbelievable!

But that wasn't the point of this blog entry. I'm just tripping because it's 7:30am and I'm being so productive. The whole point of this entry was to tell you two really cool things that Miles started doing recently and which made me smile this morning.

One of them is pulling himself up on his toy trunk to reach in and grab toys. The other is pulling the string on a wind-up doll to hear the little song it plays. Both of these are big cognitive and developmental skills!

See, the fact that he knows what that big trunk in my office is and that that's where we keep his toys, means his cognition and memory are developing well. And the fact that he can pull himself up, reach inside and take out a toy means he's getting stronger! His balance, his core strength, his endurance, they are all getting better! To see him standing, just over two feet tall, dressed in his tiny brown pajamas, looking like Yoda, well that just makes me smile!



Then about 3 days ago, I put him down in his crib to take a little nap. He wasn't asleep when I left the room, but usually he'll pass out within a few minutes if he's really tired. So I went outside to turn on the monitor while I did the dishes. I had the radio on and was listening to music when I heard a recognizable children's lullaby. I couldn't figure out where it was coming from, so I turned off the faucet and the radio and there it was, the lullaby blasting from the baby monitor. I couldn't believe it!

Miles has had this Yellow Lion doll since he was about a month old. It was a gift from my brother Ryan and his wife Una. When he was first born, he was often soothed by the little lullaby that comes from the doll when you pull the string. So I used to keep it near him and pull the string for Miles to hear the lullaby. I had forgotten how much Miles loved that song until a couple of days ago when he was crying and I played it for him again. This time, I showed him how to pull the string, but he didn't seem to get it. Well, I left the Lion doll tied to the side of his crib in case he wanted to try it out. And low and behold......he did!! He figure it out. I sat there listening to Miles pull the string over and over again every time the song ended, for about twenty minutes! I was so happy I wanted to cry!

Well, he was doing it again this morning. Just laying in his crib, legs up on the side, reaching up to pull the string and listen to his favorite Lion sing him a lullaby. It was so sweet. Oh, the little things....they really do make me happy.