Sleep...

I'm thankful for sleep today. Long, enduring, deep sleep. It only occurred to me the other day that it wasn't so long ago, I would have sold a kidney for a promise of long, enduring and deep sleep. At the beginning of the year, Ethan and Alice were sharing a room, and neither of them slept more than about 2hours at a stretch, and getting them to sleep was swear word and hair tearing out inducing.

But no more. I am lucky. Soooo frikkin lucky, that we are in an income bracket where we have to have health insurance in Australia. Our health insurance made it possible for me to take my kids to a sleep clinic, and the bill? $4000. Yeah, a 4 and then THREE zeros. But because we have health insurance, it was $250. So totally doable. So we went, and in only four nights, I came home with these amazing children I could never have imagined on the way in.

It's while we've all been so sick with this cold (and this cold is nasty, lemmetellya!) that I've become so aware, acutely aware, of how well my children have been able to still sleep. And I'm so thankful for that. Knowing that my gorgeous little Alice will pull herself on to my knee, cuddle up and say "I tired, need a bobble and a ni-nigh", and that Ethan will go and lay down in his room when he's feeling super emotional and wiped out, or at other times come and ask me to grab my knitting, help him put on a movie and sit with him to relax.

It's so good to have children who have learnt to relax. Sooo good. I can remember the days, not so long ago, when they would never have done it. And now I have the skill to know the signs, and they are able to recognise in themselves when they need the rest, too.