Goodnight to the knitting rabbit

Bedtime has been an unsteady thing in our home. It has been a roller-coaster of ups and downs through different seasons of this parenting journey.

Bedtime with a house full of all littles was very different than our current house full of not so littles anymore.

There have been seasons of cuddling and reading picture books.

There have been seasons of reading chapter books and/or the bible.

There have been seasons of tucking them in, quick kisses all around and then retreating to my room to cry and try to gain the strength to make it to the next bedtime routine.

There have been seasons of Daddy handling bedtime while mommy tried to soothe a screaming baby.

There have been times of everyone getting frustrated and the whole family in or near tears by the time the lights were out.

There have been times of cuddling with a little one that loved to hear classic literature and autobiographies read to him, while the other parent read board books to his brother.

I'm sure there are several other scenarios I'm not recalling at the moment and all of these have been repeated more than once.

Through every season there was a constant for a long time. Even on nights when a bedtime read aloud didn't happen, the desire was always there. I have always loved to read to my little ones and they were always eager to hear it.

Until Aaron came along.

As a baby, a toddler and then a preschooler he was pretty indifferent about it. He never threw a fit (about reading that is) and most of the time he would be relatively still and quiet if I was reading, but he was pretty disinterested. It was rare occasion that I could convince that cuddling and reading a book together was a good thing.

A couple of years ago, he became more and more disinterested, but it was more than that. Eventually he hated to listen to me read and read aloud time became meltdown time. It wasn't anything personal. He could not tolerate the sound of voices reading aloud. It didn't matter if it was history on CD, Jerald's math instructor on the computer, audiobooks or someone reading a book to him in person. He just couldn't handle it and it became truly painful to him. He had a very low tolerance for movies/videos too and couldn't handle anything beyond three or four exceptions. Those depended on the day. Some days he couldn't even tolerate his favorite at the time, Bob the builder.

This impacted our entire family every day, and most definately at bedtime.

It was a hard time for all of us, but most especially for my sweet boy and his mama. Hard for him as he was constantly bombarded with audio input and couldn't process it sending him over the edge daily, often hourly. Hard for me as I tried to find resolution for all of us and as I longed to just sit on the couch and read to my little guy.

Eventually we got some things worked out to make it manageable. Jerald doing math with headphones, Aaron having room time while I did history read aloud in the family room, etc. At the same time we worked with Aaron to build his tolerance for such things. Bedtime remained a challenge though.

On the other end of that now, he has certain things he loves to listen to (the Mr. Putter series by Cynthia Rylant for example) and others that he still can't tolerate. Even the books he now loves to listen to he prefers to sit and listen to a CD alone or have me read while he sits nearby. He's still not much of a "let's snuggle and read" type except on rare occasions.

I didn't realize how sad I am about that until recently. I missed many of the early opportunities to snuggle and read to Parker too. Some because of Aaron's issues and they are so close in age that it was difficult to snuggle and read with Park and not with Zig. Often it just didn't happen because the first four years of Parker's life were so hard and his pretty constant screaming in pain, especially at night. Some how it all blended together and we made it here.

Here to this place of reading chapter books when we could, but not snuggling and reading picture books with my littlest boys.

In my mind, this is just something mama's do with little ones. It's part of the job description. Hard to accept that my sons hadn't read my resume and didn't seem to care that reading aloud while cuddling was high on my job qualifications list.

Recent weeks have moved us to a new season.

Parker suddenly loves to snuggle in my lap and read. Loves it in a way that even rivals his big brother Jerald's love of all things bookish. He's been coming to me every day with handfuls of books asking me to read to him. Our current bedtime routine includes reading "just one more" as I read a few favorite bedtime books and a new one or two tossed in each night.

Apologies to Margaret Wise Brown, but at the house of Little Rebels, the great classic, Goodnight Moon has been edited.

In our house...And goodnight to the old lady whispering "hush" will forever read as "...And goodnight to the old lady whispering "hush" and knitting."

I'm pretty sure after each time the book closes and the last kiss is on his forehead I'll hear him giggle and say "you know she's really a knitting rabbit, not an old lady".

The bedtime season hasn't always been the stuff of sappy movies. It's not always been pretty.

I still carry a sadness, I think will always be there, that I didn't have these days with Aaron when he was littler or even with Parker.

Tonight as I cuddled Parker and read, Aaron sat on the edge of my bed and happily listened.

Bedtime is exactly what it needs to be for us in this season and I'm finally more than okay with that. It might be a season that seems to pass all too swiftly, much like summer. It may instead be more like a long winter. Either way, I'm cherishing every page read...Every cuddle with Parker...Every time Aaron goes off to bed only to sneak in a minute later and sit near our feet as we read...every moment forever etched in my memory and my heart. It seems these moments swell with each goodnight kiss and the the smaller, sadder memories have a little less room to take up residence.

Goodnight Moon and goodnight little boys that still believe their Daddy hung that moon and their Mama has the best hugs in town.

Editors note: Just for clarification, Aaron has no problem with books. He enjoys looking at them often and hopes soon to be reading on his own (he's close). He enjoys receiving them for gifts and especially loved his insect books for his 7th birthday yesterday. He was even thrilled to let me read 2 of the 3 of them to him at rest time yesterday. His issue has always been about having things read aloud to him, not books in general.