Rock a By and Goodnight

Being a mother to a one year old...17 month old to be exact...you have to have some ground rules. Now I always told myself my kids would have a bedtime but I'd never be that parent that makes her child go to bed while the suns still out. Making her close the blinds and lay down while its still bright in the room. Well my daughter has been waking up extra early lately. Let's say around 7is, sometimes 8 :/
I'm not much of an early bird so I'm freaking out about this. I only get to sleep in on the weekends so I try to take advantage of this as much as I can. So when my little angel turns around and starts calling "mom" I rub my eyes and look at the clock. Its ruff.
Anyway my daughter has put herself on a new schedule. Around 7 o'clock she starts to rub her eyes and whine because she is ready to do our daily time to get ready for night night routine. Take a bath, brush teeth (even though she only has 6 we don't want them to get ugly :)), pj's, then lay down and watch some tv till we fall asleep. So its around 8 to 8:30 when Elena closes her eyes for the night.
This afternoon when we are doing our now EARLY routin and getting settled into bed I turn on the tv and lay there for a while...I close the blinds and start to notice there still is some light outside. The sun is still up! What is going on!!
Have I become the mom I never wanted to be!!??!! Should I try to keep Elena up a little longer or just let her schedule just roll on??
I think I shall let her schedule roll and see how it does. She's only going to bed an hour earlyer than usual. The upside is that I do get to see her in the morning before work and I'm not staying up late anymore. So I'm not moody and grumpy because lack of sleep.
I guess its not so bad :)

Cancer

I to this day can't talk about cancer. I can't even hear about because it brings back last year for me. I see it on tv and I start to cry. I feel the pain all over again when someone asks me how's my family doing or some ppl even have the nerve to ask me if I'm the mother to the baby who died of cancer. My chest starts to burn and my eyes start to water. I'm still not ready to talk about it with ppl or even with family. I went to visit Ryder a few days ago for the first time since the funeral. I sat there in the grass and cried for hours. I keep thinking in my head why us? Why did the Lord put us threw that? Why my Aunt Tommie......why why why? Cancer brings me to so many questions but always leaves with no answers. Ryder was so young when we found out he had cancer that it shocked our family. You hear on tv about these ppl who lose there kids or there familys to cancer and you think wow I don't know how I'd deal with that....or you look at it and you think that would never happen to our family. When it did happen to us I kept thinking could this be a bad dream? No it was all reality. Ryder seemed to be getting better and we all seemed to be getting back to what others would say was "normal". Ryder was the strongest person I'd ever met. So small but yet so strong. He hardly ever cried. He spent most of his time getting poked by kneedles and always taking medicine and yet he didn't mind. He would always smile and kick his long legs. Everything seemed to be going good. We found out the hard way that cancer can play tricks on you. I remember that day....Ryders feeding tube got pulled out at home when he was playing. My aunt rushed him into the hospital and they decided to try a new method with him a different tube. They explained to my aunt how it would work and that its better for him. My aunt said ok and they took Ryder and the next time we saw him he had a new little tube. Maybe about a 2 weeks after that our little fighter was getting tired. The doctors informed us that he only had a week with us. That week seemed to fly by. I feel like I didn't get to hold him enough or kiss him enough. Why did he have to go? Why did cancer have to effect him? When Ryder finally left that's when the tears and questions started to come. The questions that had no answers. The questions I dare not ask any of my family. The questions I couldn't ask because I'd start bawling. I had a dream about Ryder last night. He was standin in a dark room waving. Waving and smiling his beautiful little smile. I forgot he had dimples. He smiled and waved and walked off........I don't know what to say about my dream. Maybe that was his way of telling me goodbye and he was ok. Stop worring about me because I'm fine.
I'm happy he came to see me but I still don't feel ready to talk about anything. Writing about something and actually talking about it are two different things. I feel a little better writing about and getting it off my chest.
Will I ever be ok to talk about cancer? Will I ever be able to say the word with out bursting into tears? Will the pain ever stop when someone speaks about it? Maybe someday I will, but right now I'm just not ready.