Forty minutes for nap time

Oh yes. Nap time.
This time was one of the biggest challenges, one of biggest lessons of patience as a new mom for me. Not the actual nap...the getting her to sleep part of nap time.
Forty minutes, like clockwork, it would take me to get her into lala land. Forty minutes of rocking my small baby, stroking her tiny forehead and back, singing sweet lullaby's. Forty minutes that at first seemed to me like wasted time, time I should spend getting things done.

In my former life forty minutes was a well calculated amount of time. Forty minutes rarely went by without much planning and good use of each and every one of those minutes. In forty minutes at work I could prepare a HUD-1 for closing or I could complete a purchase transaction. Forty minutes was twice as long as I ever took for lunch!

At home in forty minutes I could clean both bathrooms and tidy the house, I could dust and vacuum and even sweep & mop if I was ambitious! I could prep, cook and server a good meal to Adam & myself. Outside I could weed a flower bed or two, water all the plants and sweep the patio or maybe even take the dogs for a good long walk.
And now forty minutes was an amount of time that I counted in my head the many many things I should be doing and was not. I rocked I rubbed and I sang instead.

But eventually I learned the real meaning, the true importance of what I could accomplish in forty minutes. I could get my sweet baby not just to sleep for a nap, but I could help her ease into a nice sleep feeling safe, knowing I would be there when she awoke. I learned that the most amazing amounts of bonding can happen in those forty minutes, and that there was something magical about the way those minutes slowed and flowed. In those forty minutes I found myself relaxing and giving up any thoughts of me. Without even realizing it I was learning to stop rushing through life trying to accomplish all the things I could in the shortest amount of time, I was learning to slow down and just be.
And I learned that the biggest accomplishments can sometimes seem like nothing at all, until you realize how precious and wonderful every one of those forty minutes really were.

Now almost five years later I again took forty minutes~ like clockwork that child of mine is~ to get my big girl to take a nap. Again I stroked her forehead and back, sang "Twinkle Twinkle" and lay there with her for those minutes knowing that my sweet girl is drifting off to lala land feeling safe, happy and knowing that she is very important to me. And I know those forty minutes till nap are some of the best spent minutes in my life.

I guess being so far from home, and honestly not putting Simone down for nap in 2+ years I've gotten a bit nostalgic. And I guess until now I didn't even realize how special and important in so many ways that time spent has become.
And now knowing that for the next two years I'll be spending those forty minutes again, only this time it won't be so hard to let them go...
J