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Massaging a toddler through the years
By GERIANNE WRIGHT
Staff Writer
“Pat me,” my almost-3-year-old daughter whispered as she lay in her pretty princess toddler bed on the eve of her third birthday.
"Pat me.”
I had been patting her – for an hour – as I tried to coax her to sleep. If anyone were to give me a nightly massage at bedtime, I’d be out like a light each and every time. But not this kid. She tossed. She flipped. She flopped. She drew shapes on the wall with her fingers. She turned to her stomach then her back then her stomach again.
You’d think she was any given 48-year-old worrying about the making ends meet in a turbulent economy.
“Pat me,” she said.
“Go to sleep,” I said.
I’ve got things to do, not to mention the dozen cupcakes that sit half-frosted on the counter in the kitchen that she’ll take to day care in the morning.
“Pat me.”
So I patted her. My hand was numb. My arm was asleep. My rear end was asleep. My legs and feet were asleep. Everything was asleep except my daughter.
Then I thought, “What’s my hurry?”
The last two years, 364 days went by in a flash. What’s another hour in my day that I can look at her and see her smiling at me in the dark?
She’s mouthing the words to some toddler song I don’t know. And then, in a flash, she’s out.
I can get back to my cupcakes, my laundry, the other things I do before I go to bed. But I don’t move. I sit on the floor next to her toddler bed watching her turn 3.
