Weird Sleep

Have you ever noticed how a child goes to sleep?

We adults go to sleep in a standard manner: we get into a comfortable position, grab a blanket or a pillow or anything cosy, we close our eyes, and wait until we sort of “lose consciousness.”

Babies do it differently. I dunno if this is only my son, or if it applies to all babies, although I believe the latter is more likely.

When they’re sleepy, they can’t calm down. They need to be calmed down, one way or another. If you’re lucky, your child gets to calm himself down easily. If your child’s like mine, you’ll learn many ways and in the end will be extremely creative and witty and tactical about sleeping stuffs, and eventually have an easier life ^__^

Anyway, once they’re calmed down, they don’t close their eyes just yet.
If they’re lying down, they’d roll over here and there once in a while, chitter chatter quite some, stare blankly to a direction, and then, after a while, very slowly, their eyes start to blink slowly, heavily. After some slow, heavy blinks, back open ever briefly, and then blink more slowly and more heavily, their eyes finally close.
When that happens, babies need some 3 minutes or so to go into deep sleep, and after that mommies can leave (or put them in bed if they were carried and swayed) and enjoy “freedom.”

I think it’s weird. Isn’t it MUCH easier and faster to just close their eyes and relax BEFORE falling asleep instead of AFTER?
Sometimes I want to try and keep my eyes open for as long as I can before I fall asleep just like that. But I’ve never succeeded doing that. Because naturally, when I’m really really sleepy, there’s nothing else I want to do, but to close my eyes and surrender. That’s the very best part of sleeping. The ultimate relaxation.

I wonder how long babies do that. Darren is nearly 18 months, and he’s still doing that weird stuff before falling asleep.

I’d say a little prayer for you, Beloved…

Every night when hubby’s not on duty, he and I would take Darren to the bedroom when it’s time for him to sleep. If hubby’s on duty, I’d do it myself.
Every single night, we would pray together before Darren sleeps.

We’d start with a Sunday School song that goes:
♫ Lipatlah tangan, tutup mata….
Untuk berdoa pada Tuhan, amin… ♪
In English, it’s something like “Join your hands together, close your eyes… Let’s pray to God, amen…”
And after that I’d say a brief, simple prayer out loud, to give thanks to Heavenly Father and say a short request.

Although he’s still unable to sit still during our prayer time, Darren understands this ritual too well. Once we enter the bedroom and put him to bed, despite his moving about, he’d say “AMEENNN..” and sometimes also does so in the middle of our prayer.

Today Darren’s been having a little cough. So in the prayer, I said, “Dear Lord, thank You for blessing us today. Please bless Daddy at work. Now Darren is going to sleep. We pray that you would cure his cough. In Jesus’ name, AMEN.”
Right when I got to the word ‘cough’, he cleared his throat, “ehm… ehm…” :)