Some things are harder and easier than you may expect.

For the first time in two years and one month on Monday Les and I slept together, alone. When I say alone I mean it was just the two of us in the bedroom.

Will has shared a room with one or both of us since his very beginning. I thought that he would find it quite hard to make the transition to sharing with Merenia. I expected there to be, as they say, tears before bedtime, and in fact tears after bedtime as well. But in fact there were none at all. He went down calmly and happily as his sister watched on from her top bunk perch. The next morning, as is his custom, he woke too early and Merenia did as instructed; “It’s still sleeping time Will go back to sleep buddy.” And he did. There were no tears or drama when he eventually awoke again. He did not miss his morning drink and all was well in his 25 month old world. I’m not sure if I should feel elated or in fact offended.

I had thought that for us it would be nothing but sweet relief, but it wasn’t nearly as easy as that. Having Will next to us has never really had much of a downside- he sleeps through most of our noises and if we wanted to we probably could have turned on lights and telly while he slept with no hassles. The upside was that we had a bunch of routines that we will now miss dearly. The quiet moments when we kissed him good night, put on his music (“Pop goes the Eagle”), wished him a good sleep and reminded him that we’d be there in the morning for a cuddle, a booby and then a death roll. (When Will is done with his first of the morning snack he’ll turn his attention to Les getting his head as close as physically possible to Les’ face and then roll, crocodile-with-prey-like, 3 or so times till he is sufficiently comfortable). This routine has on many occasions provided us with the luxury of one sometimes two or more hours extra sleep past Will’s personal 6:30am alarm.

Sharing with Will has also meant that many a time I have heard him talk in his sleep about all sorts of things from playing outside to Daddy and Kieran and on one particularly fraught occasions some issue with the Playstation. He has also laughed, giggled, snuffled and even clapped in his sleep.

He is not at all a tidy or quiet sleeper. Never staying for long under his blankets and forgoing the convention of sleeping with his head at any particular end of the bed around the time he was strong enough to wriggle his cute little body to all points in the cot. He often kicks, thumps and crashes around like a pro-wrestler in the ring and the absence of this noise is practically audible above the din from the other side of the bed. But perhaps the thing I miss most is the fact his head was often right beside mine and on coming to bed I would reach through the bars of the cot stoke his invariably sweaty head and hold his little warm and clammy hand until I nodded off or he rolled over.

♥