All By Herself

Today as we were lying down to sleep as usual, Summy started to climb all over me. She would climb onto my stomach and lie down awkwardly, with her cheek against my eye, or worse, with her chin poking into my face. She would squirm and fiddle around till I could not lie still anymore. After being kneaded like chapathi dough, I finally said, "Summy, do you want to sleep all by yourself?" (Note the phrasing: Had I said "Do you want to sleep alone?" I knew the answer would have been a whiny "NO!". The magic words here are "all by yourself") She thoughtfully said "yeah." So I got up, tucked her in, gave her a baby doll to hug, kissed her, said "Good Night" and walked out of the room. I turned on her baby monitor as usual and started loading the dishwasher. I nearly forgot that I had left her alone, awake. A few times before I'd left her like that, and after about five minutes of silence I would hear a little voice say "Mommy", then I'd return to her room. This time there was no little voice. Kiran could finally stand the suspense no more and was worried at the silence, so he went and checked on her. He found her fast asleep. So there's another first - sleeping all by herself!