My youngest son is a night owl. Even before he was born, he kept me up at night. My usual bedtime is sometime about 9:30 on average. When I was pregnant, I would lie down and just start to drift off when he would suddenly decide to party, turning and kicking and otherwise wreaking havoc for a couple hours.
As a toddler and little boy, that hasn’t changed. He can be exhausted, but give him a bath and tell him it’s bedtime, and magically he gets a second wind. At the age of 4, he figured out how to reconnect the TV and VCR in his room so he could stay up after the rest of us were asleep and watch movies (we disconnected it every night so he would go to sleep). Most often, his nocturnal tendencies cause pain for his brother, who is more like me and will usually crash out at a decent hour. But if Nathan’s up, you can bet he’s in Nicolas’ room, inventing some sort of mischief for the two of them to carry out together.
On the nights Nicolas does fall asleep, however, Nathan is up and bored. I’ve quickly learned that those are the times he really talks to me. I’ll be lying in bed reading a book, and I see one eye peek around the doorway, followed by his smile. He runs in, jumps on my bed and lies down next to me. On occasion, he picks out the words in my book he can read. Other times, I get a long explanation of something important about Star Wars – only half of which I understand.
And sometimes, I get the real stuff. What happened at school that he didn’t like. Who his best friends are. And the standby of how I must take him to ball practice because he is going to play baseball when he grows up.
Vastly different from my relationship with my very verbal oldest son, my relationship with Nathan has been more of a fight for me in the past few years. I know very soon, he will grow out of sneaking into my room for late night talks. But right now, as much as I love my peace and quiet when they go to bed, nothing makes me smile like seeing him peek around the corner.
