Nap Time

My nephew might just be an infant prodigy. He's only been home from the hospital for three hours and my mom and I just put him down in his crib for a nap. He's not exactly sleeping, his little tiny eyelids keep opening and closing, but he's all swaddled up and lying calmly. He has a cute little thingy over his bed with miniature stuffed animals that spin around slowly to the sound of "Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep little baby." Why is it that that song seems to be a universal calmer of the infant population?

I would show you a picture of the super cute Winnie the Pooh decorated crib except the usb cord on my sony digital camera has inexplicably decided to stop functioning. This means that though I have about 300 precious pictures of my nephew, I can't transfer any of the new ones onto my computer or via email. Can we say digi-rage?

I'm sitting next to the crib writing on the computer, and I keep poking my head up over the edge of the crib to see what he's doing, making sure that the little blanket around him is going up and down. Bean and her husband are attempting to take a much deserved nap.

I remember when Bean was a little baby. I was 8 years old when she was born, and I have vivid memories of helping to put her to sleep. She would only go to bed to the sound of a fairy tale on tape. Something about the voice telling the story and the gentle whirring of the tape recorder always soothed her into sleep. One of us would lie next to her until she faded off into sleep, until we thought it was safe to quietly ease up out of the room. It was a delicate process because at the smallest sound or change in pressure, she would startle awake. This happened all the time when the eject button on the tape recorder would pop up at the end of the story. It got so that we would wait until the story was coming to a close and then very gently press the "pause" button to stop the story and avoid the snap of the eject button.

We constantly checked on her to make sure she was ok. I remember tip-toe-ing into her room, moving slowly across the room and then bending down over her, holding my breath so that I could hear her tiny sounds, watching for the almost imperceptible rise in her chest. Sometimes it would take several minutes to see movement. I would peer down at her, my face just inches from her little body. Once I was assured she was ok, I would tip-toe back out of the room and report to my mom.

Now, my little sister has a baby, and I can already tell that she's a great mommy. It's incredible and wonderful and amazing to me that the little baby I remember has now grown up and delivered her own baby. I feel so much love for both of them that it hurts a little bit.

How do parents and aunties and uncles and grand parents survive the worry of having little ones, and the sadness of not being able to be with them all the time? I already know I'm not going to want to leave on Wednesday. My newest favorite thing is holding my nephew and gazing down at his little face, watching for the slightest changes of expression, marveling at every crinkle that passes across his face. As I told Bean, it's way better than lying in a hammock on the beach in Mexico sipping a pina colada listening to the sound of the ocean. About 8 million times better.