Moving to a different place creates change by necessity, and also makes space for the possibility of changes in habits. One big change of habit we have experienced upon moving to Corvallis is the Big Girl Nap.
When Anjali was tiny, I purposefully carried her in a sling or carrier as much as possible. When she slept, it was convenient to nurse her on my body, and then let her snooze as I went about my day. When she got too heavy to carry around, we began sitting down to nurse and nap. And then it became a habit of sitting down for naps. I would fix myself a snack and something to drink, and bring what I would need to sit there for the duration of a nap. Usually I worked on the computer, sometimes I read or made art ~ or took a nap myself. Occasionally I felt comfortable leaving Anjali there while I got up, but most of the time she wanted me there, where she could feel me and smell me. She almost certainly woke up when she sensed me leaving.
When we moved to Corvallis I felt that the situation might be ripe for a change. I told Anjali that she was a big girl, and that I thought she could do without me while she napped. That I would always be close by, and all she needed to do was call out to me and I would come, but that after she fell asleep, I would like to get up and do things. She said, "Yeah; Stella just gets in bed and falls asleep by herself!" And that was that. The next time we lay down to have "boogie" for naptime, when she started to doze off, I separated myself from her, and whispered that I was going to go, and she could stay there. She whispered, "Ok," and let go. This has been the way it has happened for a couple weeks now. Sometimes when I begin to pull away, she says, "No; I need more boogie." And then after a few minutes she lets go. Sometimes after a while she calls out to me, I go in and we nurse, and then I whisper to her that I'm going to go, and she lets me. It seems that after we made that agreement, she has let herself fully relax into sleeping, instead of reserving a bit of her senses to notice whether I'm there or not.
I certainly recognize that this nap habit of ours hasn't followed the conventional "norm" for naptimes. And sometimes I have felt antsy and wanted to be doing other things. But thankfully most times I realized that this bubble of time where I could gaze at my sleeping child as she lay quietly within arms' reach was indeed so tiny. And that it was something to cherish profoundly. I do feel quite a hiccup of sentimentality about the fact that it is different now, even though I still have lain down for a nap with her more than once since we've been here. (And I still gaze at her every now and then..)
She's a big girl, that Anjali. And getting bigger and bigger every day.
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