So this evening, I overheard my sweet 4yo son putting his Blue Bear to bed. Oh. My. Goodness. Tears of pure joy welled up in my eyes. I was walking down the hall from his sister’s
room to his room to put him to bed. But
I stopped short of his view in the hallway when his sweet little voice alerted
me to his pretend play. This is what I
heard: “Jesus had five friends to help
him. Six-seven-eight-nine-ten-eleven-twelve helpers. Wow, twelve. That’s a lot of helpers, Blue Bear. Jesus taught his twelve helpers about God’s
love. That’s it! All done.
It’s time for bed now. Get in
bed. Let’s turn off your light. (C
turns off his lamp, and nears the door.)
Good night, Blue Bear. I love you. Mch mch mmch mch. (blowing
kisses to Blue Bear from the door). Got it.
Got it. Got that one. Got them
all. (He half closes the door as if
he’s about to leave, then stops short and opens it back up a bit and says…) What? (pause) OK, I love you too. Good night.”
He closes the door and finds me standing there grinning from ear to ear
with tears threatening to roll out onto my cheeks.
I couldn’t help it.
He went through our routine perfectly.
Even to include the pause at the end when I’m closing his door, and he’s
still trying to prolong our conversation.
His intonation was a perfect imitation of mine. Unreal. Actually it’s quite scary, because tone of
voice communicates so much, even more than the actual words being spoken. The "what?" sounded a little bit annoyed with Blue Bear. I was rather humbled and convicted about how
I often have a harsh with tone when speaking to my little ones. Need some help there. Don’t we all?
I need to relax and bring it down a notch. Not everything is a crisis. Sheesh, mama.
But I digress…
Ahh, but C… He was surprised to see me standing there, but
smiled and told me that Blue Bear is going to bed. He invited me back into his room, telling me
I need to be quiet because he’s already asleep.
However, the tickle-monster woke Blue Bear up, and we read another book
and a Bible story, and went through our routine together. I paused at the door just because, and said I
love you again. After I closed the door,
I heard him start to roll and hum himself to sleep... something he’s been doing
since he was able to roll his little infant head around… and he was out in 3 minutes.
This is what it’s ALL about, people. These are the moments to write about so that
we can remember just exactly how perfect and innocent they are when they’re
little. I can hear my dad in my head
saying this about my sister and me: I want to bottle up this moment and keep it
forever. I don’t want them to grow
up. C’s last day of school is tomorrow…
next year he’ll be in pre-K… then Kindergarten… then first grade… Oh, I can’t
bear to think about it now. It just all
goes much too fast. I’ve been told
numerous times that it would. I know we
all have our moments, our days, even our weeks and perhaps months of
frustration with our babies, but it is in these precious moments that all of
that melts away. Would you mind taking a
moment to share some of the funny, precious, astounding or precocious things
your little ones (maybe they’re bigger ones now!) have done to bring those
tears of pure joy to your eyes? Maybe it
might help to think of something heart-warming, if you’ve had one of those days. Thanks for indulging me, friends.
