I really don’t get the opportunity to photograph all the weird ways in which Hawkeye sometimes sleeps as the light conditions generally make it impossible, but I did snap this gem yesterday evening. This is how he fell asleep. After I gradually turned up the light, took the photo, and turned off the light, I gently pried his little fingers off cot rail. It took some effort!
He’s also super weird about blankets, in that he absolutely hates them. Until the last couple of weeks, any attempt to cover him with a blanket would be met with a full scale revolt. The last couple of weeks he’s been asking for his own blanket, but he hasn’t wanted to actually cover himself with it, preferring to hug it for a bit before tossing it to the side. After finding that larger blankets resulted in him waking up from his legs getting tangled up, we’ve resorted to a small baby quilt he received as a gift, which is stiff enough and small enough that this is not an issue.
I have several photos of him in the classic baby bum-up-in-the-air position from when he was younger, but as a toddler, he seems to prefer sleeping completely perpendicularly to us in our bed, often up high on our pillows. He went through a phase where he snuggle up to me, then throw his leg over me, and then in fits, jerks, and starts would raise it higher and higher until he had both his legs slung over my neck. Sometimes I would wake up with a heel in my ear and a face full of toddler bum, barely able to breathe. Meanwhile, my husband would get the dubious benefit of being headbutted or clawed at because Hawkeye also likes to burrow his hands under your neck in his sleep.
Lately we haven’t had to contend with this quite so much, however, because Hawkeye’s been sleeping through the night in his own bed. This has been a wonderful break for us sleep-deprived parents. He doesn’t do it every night, but two or three nights of uninterrupted sleep every week is heaven when you consider that in the past two and a half years he has done that a grand total of three times!
And you know what? I wake up relishing the deeper sleep, but I fall asleep missing his little body curled up next to me.
The Feathered Rose 