Magic Moments:Bed Time Shenanigans

Our normal bed-time routine is: messy tea, bath, bed. In recent months we’ve had this down to a fine art whereby S spent just the right amount of time in the bath to be nicely knackered from splashing, and then zonked out almost straight away. And then this heatwave started, and that went out the window.

Bed-time quickly became 2 or 3 hours of me trying to get S to sleep, and S wanting to watch Baby Jake/play with her toys/read books/run around/cry. It wasn’t much fun for either of us.

S, 22 July 2012

Towards the end of last week, as I sat on the side of the bath waiting for S to get bored of splashing, I had a bit of a revelation. I realised: you will never get this day back. Yes, you might be knackered, there might be washing up and laundry and studying and hoovering and a horrifically messy highchair waiting for you downstairs, but they will still be there tomorrow. I had been looking through photos from last year, trying to find photos of S in her cloth nappies, and found myself looking at photos of my gorgeous, tiny baby, thinking "where did that time go?"

I realised, you will never get this time back. This day,this hour, this minute, this bath time, this smile, this giggle - you will never have this exact one again.

And so, last night, bath time consisted of twice as much splashing. Twice as much shouting. Twice as much laughing. We got out of the bath and put S's nappy on, and she spent the next hour wandering about the bedroom, playing with toys and random bits and bobs. I spent half an hour standing at the top of the stairs behind the wall, playing peekaboo with her. The louder I shouted "BOO!" the more screechy and gleeful her giggles. There were cuddles, and stories, and kisses. She also managed to get her hands on a pen, and got it all over both of us. But who cares; we can always wash it off (or, you know, forget it's there and rock up to work/nursery with it tomorrow).

S, last week

This week's Magic Moments is brought to you by the ongoing realisation that all the housework, the cleaning, the preparing for tomorrow, the studying, the watching crap TV, the Twitter, the Facebook, the blogging (yes, even the blogging) all fades into insignificance when pitted against a couple of hours of playing and giggling.

If in doubt, always go for the giggling.