Bedtime, For Reals

...and now, officially, on the first night of trying to have a real schedule with an honest-to-goodness bedtime, I claim victory. After a brief gym session, I came home to a baby with swiftly closing eyes lounging contentedly in the Husband's lap on the breastfeeding pillow (such a brilliant investment, by the bye). I ran a bath, got him in it, and cleaned him off...only to discover a limp armful of baby drifting off to sleep in the warm bubbly water! Seriously: if I'd let him, E would have happily passed out in the bathtub until the water got cold enough to wake him up.

So, out of the tub it was to quickly get a clean nappy and some pyjamas. Minutes later he was feeding happily, and come 8.15pm I had - joy of joys - a soundly sleeping baby boy. Sleeping so soundly, in fact, that he barely stirred when I put him in bed by himself and popped some socks on his hands. Why socks? you ask. Because otherwise, he scratches at his forehead and scalp enough that it looks like I'm raising Ethan Scissorhands.

I am now officially on the other side of Late Night Grown-Up Time. Now I am the parent who sits up watching TV and chatting with my spouse while my offspring slumbers peacefully in the other room. I wonder what it says that I can still remember so clearly trying to sneak downstairs after my bedtime. Or the feeling of just how cool it was to be allowed to stay up for a little bit - as a fluke - when coming downstairs after having been put to bed. To be allowed to re-emerge from the bedroom late at night and sit downstairs with my parents...as a kid, you just don't know what to do with yourself. It's like you've been allowed inside a secret club: until you see it yourself, you can only imagine how much fun must be had while you're keeping quiet upstairs, pretending to sleep when really you're reading books curled up by the night light because you just have to finish that chapter. Then again...maybe that was just me.

Well, E can't stay up in his room yet reading books by the glow of his night light. For one thing, he has no night light...for the other, he can't read. But I can now revel in the baby-free hour before bed, fold my arms across my chest, and make my best gangsta face, because I'm now part of the club. I'm a parent, and I go to bed after my child.