Belly Breaths

Tonight is tricky. What is typically our 20 minute bedtime routine, give or take, is out the window completely.

You are having such a hard time book-ending your day with our normal bedtime routine. “But mama I’m NOT. TIRRRRRRED!” You express to me. You are not angry, just genuinely want more.

More giggles, more playing, more fun.

I get it, little one. I have those days too - particularly in these first few days of warm, beautiful, soul-reviving sunshine after a painfully long winter. More, more, more is all I want too. More, you will one day learn, does not always serve us well.

But as for tonight, you are not interested in welcoming this idea in the slightest.

“It’s okay, lovebug,” I tell you. “We can lay here and snuggle together while we wait to be sleepy. Big breaths. Maybe a song or two?”

You sigh. “I will twy,” you tell me.

This conversation repeats itself over and over again. Finally, you ask, “Can Sissy come in with us too? I yike it when she’s in here with me.”

I call my big(er) one in. She is reluctant at first - she is very protective of our one on one time in between Zinni falling asleep and when I tuck her in. “Big girl time,” she calls it, for she is far too mature to go to bed at the same time as a 4 year old.

But surprisingly, she agrees. She goes potty one last time and climbs in. I am now tucked snugly between them both - Zinni and I on her bottom trundle, Lucy to my right in her’s.

One or two songs slowly turns into making our way through our favorite bedtime playlist (If you haven’t already listened, JJ Heller’s “Calm” album of covers is a must if you have littles).

“But mama, I’m still not syeepy!” that little voice lets out one more time.

“Just keep listening,” I tell her. “Keep listening and keep practicing your belly breaths. I will do it with you - feel your belly puff up, in………… feel your belly fall, out…………. again, fill the belly, in…………. let it fall, out…………”

For a split second, I have the realization that I, too, am being comforted by the slowness of my breath.

By the lack of urgency.

By the fact that there is nothing else I need to be doing, nowhere else I need to be, nothing else I need to figure out in my mind. The day has come to an end, signaling permission to rest and let be all that is - not just for them, but for me too.

Freedom, now, to be right here in this moment. To feel their little heads on my shoulder, their sausage hands squeezing mine, to smell their sun kissed hair and skin after a warm spring day.

Before I know it, I feel my 4 year old’s breathing slow down, and I realize it is not by force. It is the natural rhythm of a sleeping baby - a reminder that no matter how hard they try to convince us otherwise, no matter the fact that their clothes are almost out of the capital “T” after a number stage, no matter the fact that they are becoming increasingly self-sufficient with each day that passes, there is, in fact, still a very real physiological co-dependency of a baby inside of there.

I listen more carefully, and realize my 7 year old baby’s breath has also slowed down, and her piglet size snores have made an appearance.

I close my eyes and they fill up with tears.

This. This is what makes every second worth it.

Every tear, every hardship, every moment I didn’t know whether or not I would make it through - this moment is living, breathing proof that I did. By no means have I arrived, nor will I, for “arriving” is not the point.

It never is.

No, not arrival. As cliche and excruciatingly frustrating as it is to be told this in the moment, the point is pausing in these moments along the journey and realizing that noticing them and breathing them in and letting them shape us is the point - that and that alone.

Not arrival, but the raw moments where we fall and fail and wonder and only see question marks, and choose to sit in them and be present and become curious about what they are teaching us and allow them to shape us and change us for the better so that in these moments of belly breaths and sitting with the inconvenient wiggles instead of rushing them away in the name of convenience - that is the point.

For right here in this moment, all of the question marks disappear.

Right here in this moment, I know without a shadow of a doubt I am exactly where I need to be.

Right here in this moment, maybe I have, in fact, arrived.