All the Riches

What a beautiful and interesting evening with my daughter.

She didn't eat much at dinner, so, of course, was hungry right at about bedtime. She sat down in front of me moments before bedtime, thoughtfully cradled her chin in her hand and tapped her face with a finger. "Hmmmm. I'm hungry. Hungry, hungry. What should I eat? Think. Think, think, think. What should I eat?

I know!!! Eggs. I should eat eggs, mama!"

Then, when we finally made it up to bed, and I had just tugged her pajamas past her ears, she informed me, "I waked up in the morning!"

"You did!" I replied.

"Yeah! Jesus woked me up!"

"He did? What did He want you to do?"

"Not know! He waked me up! He waked you up, too!"

Snuggling through our bedtime routine, she kept asking for "one more song" (of course). The last couple of nights, she has asked for "EyeEyeOh" (Old MacDonald), so we sang that one, and tonight, for the first time, she requested "ABC." And she knew almost all the letters! She got hung up a little on LMNOP, but really, what kid doesn't?

I kissed her goodnight, and left the room. She started crying, which is not totally out of the ordinary lately--more often than not, it's a sneaky way of persuading you to let her stay up a few minutes longer, or postpone bed by claiming hunger or something--so I let it continue, figuring that she'd get the picture and be asleep in moments, but that was not to be. Tonight, the crying escalated until I heard her slide out of bed. I rushed up the stairs, hoping that I could contain her and her sobs before she woke Judah. Somehow, he slept through her sobbing in the hall before I made it up there.

I snatched her up and sat her on the end of the bed. "What's wrong, Charis?

"I sad."

"Why are you sad?"

"I crying."

"Were you scared? Or hot? Or lonely?"

Her eyes widened. "Scared!"

"Well, we need to pray and ask Jesus to take away the scared, okay?"

We prayed, and I lay next to her while she calmed down. Her eyes fluttered, centimeters away from sleep, and before turning over, she lifted her head off the pillow and kissed me on the nose. When I thought she was asleep, I sat up to leave. She sat up too, kissed me again, and I told her that I loved her so much, but I needed to go downstairs so she could sleep. "We pray first." she said. So we did.

And yes, it is more than an hour and a half past her bedtime, but she's asleep now. And I had to run down and blog all of this before I forgot a single thing. What a treasure.