Last night was a hard night for us. Avery refused to go to bed and it took 2 hours of Josh and I both trying to get her to sleep before it finally happened. As a mom when you can’t get your child to sleep you feel defeated. You feel like you didn’t do your job as a mom and in those moments I get worried that Avery will have nights like this every night but the reality is this happens very rarely. But when it does it is very hard on everyone! Especially Avery because we know she is tired, she just can’t seem to fall asleep. You even start questioning your parenting even after they fall asleep. I kept thinking why didn’t what I usually do work? Was I short with Avery at all? Was I rushing her to fall asleep? What could I do better next time this happens? All these thoughts run through my head but I then realized that I was over complicating it. She had a bad night. Lots of kids get them and it’s 100% normal. And boy do I take for granted the nights that Avery falls asleep in 15 minutes sometimes! Yesterday Josh got home from a business trip so I am sure that she was excited to see him and also was worried that he would leave the next morning so she wanted to stay up with him. Even in these hard nights I am reminded how wonderful our daughter is. We brought out The Trigger Wheel to massage her and she grabbed it and started to massage us with it. She didn’t want us to massage her at all she wanted to be the one massaging us. And she would kiss us a bunch and give lots of Huggies. That’s the way she shows her love for us and we absolutely love it! Even though it was a very exhausting and hard night, every night and day with Avery is one that I am thankful for. I am thankful that I get to stay up and take care of my daughter because she needs us and depends on us so much. It feels great to be needed by her and someday she won’t need me as much so I treasure the times that she does. In the moment of it being 9:30 and 1 1/2 hours into trying to get a child to bed it is easy to get very frustrated and even show that frustration to your kid but remember that they need you and they want you to comfort them. It is not every day that nights are hard so when they are hard be grateful for the easy nights and soak up every night no matter how it goes as much as you can. The hard days make me appreciate the easy ones, they make me realize how hard I’m working to be the best mom I can be for Avery, the hard days make me grateful because I would rather have hard days as a parent than no days as a parent. Soak up every bit of your little ones and enjoy the good AND hard days!