It's Just Cool! June 02, 2008

"It's just cool."  When people ask me about being a parent, that, or something close to it, is my usual response.  I know, profound.  I'm a decent writer, but I'm no poet.  There are so many facets to being a daddy that I either can't, or haven't figured out how to, express.  So I end up with, "it's just cool."  It reminds me of a teenage crush when I asked a girl out and she said "yes" and my response was not "thank you" or something correspondingly gracious, it was, "cool."  Needless to say, her friends, who were my friends too, rightfully thought I was some dumb, immature surfer.  I guess some of that is still in me.  Here's a little about bedtime with Noah that gives a small window into what my, "it's just cool," actually means. 

Noah's bedtime is 8:00.  We love Noah, but we cherish 8:00.  Once he's changed into his nightime diaper, teeth are brushed, scriptures are read, and prayers are said, mommy and daddy take a deep breath and enjoy the next little while before our bedtime, whether Noah actually falls asleep or not.

Except for anything that sounds like an emergency, 8:00 is when we clock out (not quite, but we like to think of it that way).  Some days Noah's out like a light, other days he makes the sweetest little boy sounds while he softly and methodically taps the wall with his foot.  Usually that doesn't last too long, but it can go on for an hour-and-a-half.  Before we go to bed, we stop back in for a couple moments of parental pay as we sweetly turn him around in his bed and cover him up.  Sometimes I even try to hug him just a little bit too hard so he'll stir just enough to answer my "I love you, Noah" with his trademarked "Love you too, Dada."  On the noisy nights, it's always fun to go in and see what he's managed to do with himself while we've ignored his playful bedtime noises.

Well, last night there was even more noise than usual.  In the past, we've found him balled up on the chair that used to be in his room (now replaced with a LoveSac), flipped around backwards in his bed with feet dangling over the edge, curled in front of the door so we had to roll him out of the way to get into his room, and who knows what else that we've forgotten.  Last night was a new one.

Somehow, Noah had fallen asleep with his lower half wedged under the little space under his toddler bed.  Who knows whether at some point more of him was under the bed?  Every night he balls up his many, many blankets to use as a pillow, so it's obvious he meant to fall asleep on the floor.  We gently put him back in bed and covered him up (after snapping the pictures, of course) and went through the rest of the nightly routine.  He stirred a bit more than usual and said something sweet to me and off to bed Laura and I went.

Moments like these, of laughter and sweetness, are such great pay for parenting.  It's amazing how we go through so many days and so much of our lives becomes routine.  Before we had children, Laura and I cherished our time together and it had many sweet moments, but these parenting paydays are something altogether different.  Not necessarily better or worse, just gratifying in a sweet, peaceful way I couldn't have imagined.  When I talk about having Noah and I say, "it's just cool," that's what I'm talking about.  Undoubtedly Emerson or Wordsworth would have come up with something really poignant to say about such moments, but "it's just cool" is the best I can do and it feels the same as all the flowery poetic stuff those dudes could say.