Beloved daughter,
Bedtime was different tonight. Normally, we read three or four books as the light on your sunset alarm clock dims, and then I pray, sing you a song, and lay you down.
Tonight, halfway through our first book, you scrambled off my lap in search of something—I assumed a different book, until you went behind the rocking chair and found a big purple balloon that had wandered in earlier in the day. Mom and I have had our share of sleep struggles with you, and so I’ve read my share of baby bedtime articles. I know that the less stimulation at bedtime, the better.
This time, though, I couldn’t help but let you go on. As your lullaby monkey carried on its sleepy tune, you did a little dance around your room, bear-hugging that balloon and tossing it up in the air, then watching it with glee as it drifted back down. Sometimes you’d look at me instead, smiling, and the balloon would fall behind you or plop onto your head.
I realized as I watched you, the light growing dimmer by the minute, that part of the moment’s magic was its relative silence. There was the soft padding of your footed pajamas atop the carpet and the twinkle of the lullabies, but unlike any such scene with your brother nowadays, there was no talking. It was just a girl and her balloon and her daddy looking on, delighting in her delight.
These wordless moments with you don’t feel as if they are without words; they feel beyond words.
Such moments are an increasingly rare commodity as your vocabulary blooms. You now know quite a few words—up, water, cheese, please (a common combo, those last two), and of course brother, mama, and dada, to name a few. Even when you’re not using words I recognize, you’re often talking, telling stories and describing the world around you in a tongue familiar to me yet indecipherable. And when it comes to listening, your comprehension is off the charts. You are definitely in that Baby Groot phase of communication, eager to show off how much you understand and unafraid to make mistakes.
For as much as I love your adorable voice and the funny-sounding words emerging from your mouth, I am already starting to miss my pre-language daughter. And though I want you to keep growing and learning every day—I couldn’t stop you if I tried—there is part of me that is glad you’ve been behind in learning to speak, part of me that grasps the blessing of slowness.
Bedtimes like tonight’s are a gift. It is a gift that Mom and I get a few more moments before the busyness of a young tongue kicks in, a gift that we can walk wordless with you just a little longer, that I get to witness the occasional blissful balloon bedtime, that I can deceive myself in the lowering light, lulled by the soft melodies of babyhood, that perhaps the purple balloon floating above your smiling face somehow won’t fall back down.