Whispering in the dark

Matthew is running crazy this week. He has a huge mission weekend (we've been planning around this thing for months now), a few weddings, a ton of meetings. So I've been hunkered down at home with the babies. Nighttime routine done alone can be daunting with two little ones. Wanting to get everyone's bath done in a timely fashion, get the jammies and lotion and diapers on, stories read, songs sung, bottles administered. And then everyone off to bed.

Izak's language skills have completely turned on the last week or so. He's a singing, parroting jabberjaw. We call him the hootenanny, defined as one who celebrates loudly in public and invites others to join along. LOL So bedtime becomes a time for much song and shenannigans. Sometimes he'll be in there for an hour or more singing and chatting. But last night, after he'd been down for 1.5 hours I heard a very sad, scared little cry. As I went in, he popped up in his crib, whimpering. I don't know what happened, maybe he's getting a little scared of the dark, but I laid him back down and leaned in closely until our noses were almost touching in the dark. And then he said, "Baa baa basheep?" (Note: This is his universally favorite song and I am called upon to perfom it at least one hundred times a day.) So I began to whisper it to him, "Baa baa black sheep, have you any wool?" And then he began to whisper it in unison with me, "Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full...". We whispered the whole song together, pushing away the boy's night fear, edging out the mommy's loneliness. At the end he would, in full voice, say, "Again? Again?" And then we would start again, whispering so closely that I could smell his breath and freshly shampooed hair and baby powdered belly. After, oh, say nineteen rounds I left him to fall asleep, tucking away these most tender memories in my heart.