ALL DONE! ALL PAU!

My youngest has never been good at bedtime. Before I get into that, here's a little side story. He's our last child, and from the second I found out I was pregnant I wanted to absorb every moment of it. To store everything in memory because I'd never be doing it again. Once he was born, I wanted to stop time and cherish every thing he did. I know that every mom wants this. But with my first two kids, I don't remember a whole lot. My postpartum depression was so bad I've pretty much blocked out nearly 3 years of my life. I remember things, but in that foggy way you remember a dream a day later. So, it was super important that I kept myself mentally healthy and wouldn't spend my life wishing I hadn't been depressed through another childs infancy/toddler years. Back to my youngest...To make a VERY LONG story short, I knew from early on that I wanted to co sleep and nurse and Ain't no one gonna stop me! So we did, for much too long. He was nearly 1 1/2 before he slept in is own bed. Judge all you want, but I was creating memories, and just, you know, lost sight of structure and have been cleaning the mess up ever since I realized it. So here we are. He's 2 years and almost 2 months old. And still throws a tantrum like no other at bedtime. He wakes up often picking up where he left off. "ALL DONE!!! ALL PAU!!! ma. MA!" He screams. Side note, I'm part Hawaiian and my mom is determined my kids know their language. So Pau = Done. (He reserves that one for when he's really serious.) Well tonight I've decided that I'm going to blog while sitting in my chair in his room as he settles in. But before I began this I felt compelled to look up Proverbs 31 ministries Daily Devotion. A particular part of it stood out to me as my child is yelling at the world, and it's this..."There is only one name worthy of our wishing, one name deserving of our dreams. And when we keep that name in the middle of our madness, He offers hope in our beginning, glory in our end, and grace for every moment in-between." After reading this devotion it didn't give me a huge eye opening thought, but it reminded me that I started out hopeful as a parent, I'm in the middle of madness right now, but there's grace abounding, and I can offer a little of it to my toddler, since he's going to (hopefully) be asleep in 20 minutes. I know I have my all pau moments during the day. He's allowed to have his. I suppose.