bedtime routines

“Don’t forget the fast kisses mama” she says as I’m getting ready to walk out of her bedroom for the night.  This is what she has affectionately named my series of 3 kisses and a raspberry blown on her forehead that we do every night before bed.  We’ve put the dolls in their places.  I’ve turned on the closet light, and opened it on one side, just a crack.  The sound machine is on, playing the correct sound.  Not the rain, not the music, not the birds chirping, but the white noise.  The one that sounds like a fan.  The light on the sound machine is pink, changed back from when the friend that was over turned it to blue.

It is the same every night.  I have to tuck her in the same.  First the rainbow blanket, and then the comforter.  Her room is set up the same, everything in its place.  Well besides the lol dolls scattered all over the floor.  I’ve stepped on at least 3 on the way to her bed.  If I’m home, it can’t be daddy that tucks her in.  It has to be me.  It doesn’t matter if I am on day 2 of being covid positive and my fever is making me weak and my head hurts so bad I can barely open my eyes.  I am home, so it is my job.

I am annoyed by this often.  I’m resentful that it can’t change, at least not until she has decided to update some part of the routine.

But….

I think of Brady.  He is fourteen now.  His bedtime routine is often me peaking my head in his room saying goodnight and reminding him what time he needs to go to bed because I am headed there before him. There is no kiss, no tuck in, no sound machine.  There is no same thing that makes me feel needed.

I know there used to be, before. But I can’t remember when it stopped.  I can’t put my finger on exactly how it used to be.  There is a reminder of it though.  Just one that I see sometimes laying on his bed when I poke my head in to say goodnight.  The stuffed elephant that never left his side when he was little.  It went everywhere he went, and there was no way he was going to bed without it.  Hers is loveyandbunny (said like one word often, even though they are two things).  His was Horton.  Chewed, smelly, and very well loved Horton.  

Seeing it makes me smile. It also makes me a little sad. I’m reminded that maybe this particular bedtime routine from my girl isn’t so bad. That one day, when the fever has broke and she is fourteen I’ll poke my head in her room and tell her goodnight and catch a glimpse of loveyandbunny and miss, really miss the nights where bedtime routines were particular, and necessary.