Sleeping Through the Night

My friend is a new mom and one of her goals for her tiny son is that he sleep through the night.  I am fortunate in that regard.  At our house, we are at the perfect intersection of children sleeping through the night and not yet having to wait up for teenagers to come home.


Secret Service has always been a good sleeper.  (So important in a baby.)  Sport, easy-going in most regards, has more often struggled in this department.  It sometimes still happens that we put Sport to bed and a couple of hours later, he pops up and announces he can't sleep. 


Getting children to sleep is an art.  When they were younger, Science Girl and I spent countless hours rocking them, singing to them, reading bedtime stories.  And at the end of a long day, it was always good fun to get to search the house to find the stuffed animal that they wanted to sleep with that night.


One of our go-to-sleep strategies was to make their bedrooms a place they'd want to be.  A couple of years ago, we went to buy a bed for our guest room and while at the store, both boys became enamored with the temperpedic foam beds.  Having no money of their own, the boys were not hindered by budgets, so they didn't see a problem with requesting that we buy them each a bed that cost over $1,000.  At one point in the negotiation, Sport collapsed on the floor model temperpedic mattress and declared that he would not spend another night in his current bed.  Sport proclaimed that now that he had experienced the comfort of a temperpedic, he realized that sleeping on his old bed was like sleeping on rocks.  Luckily, at that same store, there were inexpensive, non-name brand versions and the boys emerged victorious, with  mattresses that Sport said was like "sleeping on a cloud."


Anyway, periodically, one of the boys have asked Science Girl or me to lie down with them while they start to fall asleep.  I remember the last time Secret asked me to lay down with him.  I had several valid reasons why I didn't want to - tired, busy, etc.  But, I thought to myself, he's growing up, how many more times is he going to ask me to do this?  Mostly, he says good night and puts himself to bed. 


The other night, I was comfortable in my own non-temperpedic bed, remote in hand, pajamas on, when Sport called out, "Will you lay down with me?"  I didn't want to get up, but then I wondered, how many more times will he ask.  Secret hasn't asked me to lay down with him for two years.  I put down the remote and went.