The Stillness

When my daughter was first born and younger, she would only take "cat naps" during the day (naps lasting minutes up to 20 minutes), if she would sleep at all. I believe she was around 3 months old when she migrated into sleeping longer blocks of time during the day. She's always been a great night sleeper (except for all the wakups!). And it was around the same time that she dropped down to only requesting one night feeding. It was perfect for me, because I returned to work around that same time.

After she started sleeping longer blocks during the day, it took me a while to figure out that I could actually get something done and I didn't need to just sit somewhere and wait for her to wake up. I was very sleep deprived in the early days, and I would just watch the stillness and the world around me and enjoy the break.

Now that I have these 1 hour blocks or so, I get stuff done. Laundry, dishes, picking up. You know, the normal household stuff. Well, just now Maddie shouted in her sleep (she does this - it's really weird - probably worthy of another post). It's like she's having a bad dream or something because she's completely asleep when I go look at her. Anyway, she just had a couple shouts and she's still asleep. But I was thinking that she would wake up - even though she's probably got another 40 minutes or so. So I sat down and waited. Just like I used to when she only slept for minutes at a time. And I noticed the stillness again. The sounds of the traffic passing our house, the sound of the rain, the brilliance of the sun streaming through the windows, the loud hum of our refrigerator that's probably going to die soon. It's an interesting perspective on the world.