Bedtime

The other night, my wife was looking at video footage of Joelle when she was younger, still crawling around and laughing, and felt a tiny bit of sadness because she was growing up too fast. I thought to myself, “Relax. She’s not even two years old yet.”

A couple of days later my wife told me, “We need to get a bed for Joelle because she’s getting too big for the crib.” I said, “Okay,” but thought “How much is this bed going to cost, and will I have to be the one putting it together?” My wife recognized the look on my face and said, “It’s going to cost around $200.00? And yes, you’ll have to put it together.” Well then, I guess that’s that.

We took an early drive to IKEA and purchased the bed we wanted for Joelle. It was surprisingly easy to put together. I didn’t drop one F-bomb while I was assembling it. Once we finished setting it up in Joelle’s room, we were excited to see how she was going to react. Joelle was excited and jumped on the bed and had an ear-to-ear smile that would melt your heart. The true test, however, would be if she would actually sleep on it. The evening came and so did bed time. Joelle began complaining immediately that she didn’t want the bed and started crying. Instead of fighting her all night about it, my wife decided to put her back in the crib. What a waste of $200.00. I could’ve bought some new Kobe shoes with that money or spent at least 20 minutes at the blackjack table before losing it all.

My wonderful wife, however, came up with a plan to rearrange the furniture so the bed was in the same place as the crib in order to give Joelle the same perspective of the room while she was sleeping. As it turns out, it worked! It worked during nap time anyway. I had yet to see if it would work through the night. Again, the evening came and it was bedtime for Joelle. Our nightly ritual includes reading some stories to her, my wife putting her down, and then I close with a kiss and tucking her into bed. Last night was a little different though. I sat there on her new bed and held her reciting scripture and telling her the Lord provided a new bed for her. I also kept telling her how much I loved her. I could’ve been there on the bed all night with her it was so much fun. I tucked her in and told her “good night” as usual. After I closed the door, something hit me. My little girl IS growing up. She’s forming into a little person with her own thoughts and feelings. She tells me she “loves me” and can’t go to sleep without “daddy’s kiss.” Maybe she’s just posturing because she doesn’t want to get kicked out when she turns 18. Or maybe she knows I’m one of two people in the house who knows how to work the DVD player and can turn on Baby Einstein for her. Either way, if I were capable of crying I think I would have.

Eventually my little girl will grow up and be less affectionate, more independent, and start dating someone I disapprove of. But for now, I’m going to enjoy these moments with my daughter because it’s worth more to me than a hundred pairs of Kobe shoes.