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Trying to hold on to my babies forever… This post is sponsored by Johnson’s®. Thanks for reading and sharing.
I am not a schedule maker, nor a schedule follower.
I live in the moment — and I am often late for the next moment.
But over the course of my fifteen years of parenting, there has been one routine I have stuck with — bath time.
Every night is the same bedtime routine — bath time, stories, snuggles and sleep.
It started with my son the first night we came home from the hospital. He loved his evening bath and baby massage. It was the perfect way for us both to slow down and relax before bed.
So every single night, in the middle of cluster feeding, I gave him a bath and a long baby massage. A few times he even fell asleep right there on the diaper change table as I massaged him.
When I had my daughter almost six years later, I continued the ritual of bedtime bath and baby massage. Those soothing moments together at the end of a busy day were so important for both of us.
Even when we were traveling or out late, my babies had their bath before bed.
I can still remember it now — breathing in the smell of my clean baby in a fresh pair of jammies. Heavenly.
While my son is now a teenager and has grown far beyond bath time routines, my daughter is nine and still will rarely ever go to bed without a bath, stories, and some snuggles. She even coaxes massages out of me many nights too.
I must admit, there are nights when I am exhausted and impatient, and I try to rush through our bedtime routine.
But when I get tempted to fast forward those parenting moments, I play back the memories I have had with my babies, the moments that are gone so quickly.
Babies seem to grow up faster than bath bubbles disappear. Creating those rituals helped me to turn moments into memories, even as they were happening. Using products that I trust, made every moment and memory count— there was nothing better than hearing a fit of giggles during bath time, playing with bubbles or a snuggly yawn of sleepiness as my kids drifted off to sleep. That’s why I’ve always had Johnson’s® products in our home, both for myself and for my kids.
Can I tell you a secret — I still use Johnson’s® Bedtime® baby lotion before I go to bed.
I have a bottle on my bedside table and every night as I massage the lotion into my dry and aging skin, I breathe in the lavender scent and remember those years of baby massages, bath time bubbles, and freshly shampooed wisps of hair.
It is a universal wish — to hold on to our babies a little longer, to make time slow down.
Even my daughter laments that she is growing up too fast. She says she wants to be a kid forever.
While I don’t wish back the sleepless nights of life with young children and I do enjoy the freedom of having older children, I wish at least one day each month my babies could be babies again. I would snuggle them and cuddle them and breathe in all their sweet baby-ness.
And then, when my babies transformed back to their older versions of themselves, I would take a nap and get some work done. Because yes, there are some benefits when babies grow up.
For more info about JOHNSON’S baby products, visit JOHNSON’S® baby on Facebook
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Written by Janice Croze, co-founder of 5 Minutes for Mom
Talk with me: @5minutesformom and Facebook.com/5minutesformom
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