You know when you’re a new Mom and you’re sleep deprived and there are days when you feel like you might actually be losing your sanity from lack of sleep? It’s not cliche, it’s actually a real thing. I’m not joking.

While it was the most challenging thing I have ever done in my entire life, I think somehow it only amplified my exitement for every tiny little development he would make, every tiny little stride forward and I took every second of it in and inhaled it because it was those little tiny things that I would thrive on that kept me going.  The first real smiles. I still remember those as plain as day and I hung on to those with everything I had and waited with baited breath waiting for him to giggle and smile at me in the morning. That, my friends was worth the world. I remember crying when that happened. It was like being thrown my first bone.

Thankfully (and I emphasize the THANKFULLY), my little Peanut started sleeping through the night 11ish hours around the 8 mth mark and it changed my life completely. Now that he’s rounding the corner into an ELEVEN month old, he’s going down to sleep completely on his own (no rocking or wakings!) and even though we are currently going through an extra early wake up in the 5 o’clock hour, I’ll gladly take it.

All of that was a precursor for my photo above.  Why the strange segue you ask? The best part about being a Mother is the new perspective of rewards you thrive on in your day to day life. An entirely new perspective of the world and what brings me joy.  While any Mom can appreciate pretty shoes or hats or spa treatments (not knockin’ because Mama can always use a nice hat or a spa treatment!), there’s one thing that sticks out in my head about what got me through eight straight months of interrupted sleep and it was feeling of his incredibly soft, warm, tiny little hands brushing across my cheeks in the dark.  It sounds so cliche & corney, but it was the most gratifying feeling in the world.  There was just something about his chubby, soft little hands. No matter how tired I was, no matter how frustrated and tired I felt during that time, he’ d touch my face with that little hand and I always knew I was making the right choices for him.  I just wish I could go back in time just to reassure myself that was the case the whole way through. I agonized over if I was making the right decisions about nurturing sleep habits and I can honestly say that having that reassurance back then would have helped me a lot, but I guess that’s all a part of the learning process of motherhood.

So now my little baby is resembling more and more like my little boy as he turns the corner on his eleventh month and even his tiny little toes are starting to show me that he’s turning into a little boy, poking their way through his footie pyjamas…

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/HaZZ/~3/pfnnPJ1Fp6Q/tiny-toes.html