Holding a sleeping baby

I feel this sense of time slipping away lately. It is February. Tucker will be 1 in a few days and Madeline will be 4 a few days after that.

I just put Tucker down for his morning nap- I can make him take one nap a day but it is a short one and he still does better with two naps. He takes a bottle before any rest time, sometimes I still nurse him if he acts like he would prefer that. He took a bottle today and was falling asleep in my arms. I took the bottle out of his mouth and he promptly replaced it with his first two fingers on his left hand (that stink) and went to sleep while I was holding him.

It was heaven. I held him for a few minutes before I put him in his crib and watched him sleep. Normally I would try to get him in his crib while he is still awake so he can "self sooth" which he has really gotten good at doing but lately I feel like I just don't care. I want time back. I want every day back that I wished that he would take a nap or go to sleep by himself. I want months and months back of not holding him for hours every time he slept so that I could get laundry done or make dinner.

I have worked so hard over the last year to get things back to normal- our normal routines etc. only to learn that normal is something completely different after the second child comes. But really, there is no "normal" for baby's first year. It's just about baby. Maybe we should decide that for one year the laundry doesn't get done. Meals will be take out only. The house can be messy. Right now my house is pretty clean, laundry is waiting to be put away (like ALWAYS) and I will make a grocery list in a few minutes and go to the store. But who cares. I would let all of that fall away for one more year of Tucker small enough to still fit in my lap. Madeline too. I'd be home every day all day in my pj's stinking like Tucker's fingers and holding my sleeping babies with a big smile on my face.