Spaces

Ivey has been going through another clingy phase.  She has always waxed and waned in her comfort with sleeping.  We have been through periods where she screamed and cried and pitched royal fits over going to bed... and all through the night.  She is a night owl by nature, and just as emotional a creature.  I think the two collide and create for the tendency for a difficult night. 

Sometimes, when she wakes in the middle of the night, she finds her daddy on the couch, and snuggles in beside him.  She knows that he will rarely take her back to bed.  Ok, he never will.  Not just because he enjoys the snuggle time, but because he could not attain the consciousness required to transport her back into her own bed.  Sometimes, she ends up snuggling up in bed with her sister.  They fall asleep amid a pile of stuffed animals and hard books.  For a long time, they simply shared the bottom bunk together.  For the past few months, Olive has decided to claim the top bunk as her own.  This, of course, has created a ripple in Ivey's delicate nighttime balance.

For the past few nights, Ivey has been upset that Olive wakes up early, leaving her behind.  She told me how much she loves sleepovers with Grandmomma, because she sleeps beside them.  With red rings around her eyes, puckered lips, and wet cheeks, she asked me tonight if she could sleep with me.  I was not ready to sleep, and I knew by the hour that she would not be able to get the rest she needed in my room.  She cried about Olive waking up early, about not being able to sleep with Daddy, about how she wanted to go back and have another sleepover with Grandmomma. 

I tried to calm her fears by explaining, "You know, this house is completely filled to the very top with Love.  Everything under this roof, all the air that fills every single room, is filled up with Love.  It fills up all the cracks and all the spaces."  She did calm down, lying her sweaty head on her ladybug pillow at the foot of Olive's bed.  Eventually, she drifted off the sleep.

And then, at 12:30 in the morning, with the soft cheeping of newly hatched guinea keets and even softer music drifting across the house, I picked her up from her bed.  I put her in mine.  I watched her tiny chest rise and fall.  And, I will fall asleep next to her. 

Because there may be a space or two under this roof that does feel a little bit too hollow, afterall.