Bedtime

I had always heard other parents talk about “bedtime” as if it were some ritual set in stone, akin to worshipping on Sundays or Monday Night Football. Well, it is. I think each family has their own particulars, but the perennials usually include a bath, reading and tucking in.

My three year old daughter’s bath has become more and more involved as she has gotten older. In her younger days, it was indeed simply a bath, the purpose of which was to clean your body from the day’s detritus. Now she and I have different purposes in mind. For her, bath is prime play time. I’m still trying to get her clean. There is hardly room for her in the tub due to her impressive arsenal of bath toys. This is my fault, of course, I like buying her sh*t. In the bath tub she has the following: a basketball hoop suction-cupped to the tile along with three balls to use, five Elmo faces that you suction to the bottom of the tub to prevent slipping (but she likes to put the Elmo’s on the wall instead, thereby negating their true purpose), lots of sea creatures like dolphins, whales and sharks (one is a Great White, and I tried to introduce her to the concept of ‘Jaws’ by having the Great White chase the smaller sharks and whales around the tub and eating them, but she said “no, he’s not doing that,” and then grabbed the former ‘Jaws’ from me and had him hug and cuddle the smaller Hammerhead shark saying “that’s his Daddy”…with a slight feeling of shame I then encouraged the kinder and gentler Jaws) and some other animals that stick to the wall. With all of this, she still does manage to stretch out and “swim” in her bath. That must have been fun, when you were small enough to actually swim around in your bathtub.

By the way, I have very much upset my wife. What I have done, judging by her reaction, may be grounds for divorce. When taking out my daughter’s rubber bands in her hair holding the ponytails in place, I sometimes use scissors to just cut them (as opposed to yanking them out and having her shriek in alleged excruciating pain). Well, occasionally my cutting is not heart surgeon-precise enough, and I accidently clip a few individual strands of hair along with the rubber band. You should have seen my wife’s reaction when she found a very small clump of hair on the bathroom floor. It was like CSI and she had just discovered evidence left behind by a vicious serial killer. “It will take years for this hair to grow back!” Then, taking her cue from Mommy, my daughter chimed in berating me for cutting her hair (is this my future? Attacked from all sides by a gaggle of women? And another one on the way?) Evidently she will have a few hairs out of place in the years to come, and this will make her an outcast to society. I tried to be contrite and keep the smile off my face to show that I understood the severity of the situation. I still don’t. Speaking of taking cues from Mommy, you've got to be careful what you say around kids this age. They repeat it. My wife was pissed at me about something awhile ago and said "it's a fine line, Dez." Ever since then, whenever my daughter is pissed at me, she looks sternly at me and says "it's a fine line, Daddy." I'm guilty of it too. Actually worse. They repeat swear words, I have figured out.

I gotta say, I dig bedtime. Due to my wife’s pregnancy condition, I’m doing bedtime mostly these days. It is great bonding time. We brush her teeth (well, I brush them and then she sucks on the toothbrush and thinks she is also brushing). We get her into the bodysuit jammies (man, those look comfortable) and then it is reading time. I want genius children, so I have been reading to her since the day she was born. That’s what all the books say to do. Little kids get obsessed with books. So once she likes a book, it is probably close to a month of reading that same book every night until I can convince her to move on to a new one. She likes the predictability, and she thinks she’s reading along with me by telling me the story that she has memorized by this time.

Currently we are on the Disney version of ‘The Gingerbread Man.’ This is the one where Daisy makes Donald Duck a Gingerbread Man for his birthday, but the Gingerbread Man comes to life through some dark art and then runs off, only to have Daisy, Donald, Mickey, Goofy, Chip and Dale all join chase as the Gingerbread Man joyfully taunts them, and I don’t understand why he is so joyful as this whole group of people are chasing him with the sole purpose of devouring him, and then he comes across the Big Bad Wolf relaxing by the river. Life Tip #34: don’t trust someone whose name starts with “Big Bad.” Big Bad offers the Man a ride across the river to escape his pursuers, and coaxes the Man closer to his jaws to avoid getting wet on the crossing and…well you know what happens. My daughter shrieks with glee when the Big Bad Wolf chomps the Gingerbread Man (probably in part due to my added sound effects), the same Gingerbread Man she had been rooting for the entire story by repeating his taunts to Mickey and Co. Anyway, that has been February’s book.

As I lay down in bed with her as she goes to sleep we review the day’s events. I also picked this up from some parenting book, but I really like this one. She tells me about her day at Day Care. Here’s the text of a recent note we received from her teacher: “She was climbing on the table, running around the classroom. At naptime she jumped up and down on her cot, running around the class and would not lay down. She told another teacher that she does not listen to Mrs. X because ‘she does not play games.’” (I couldn’t figure out whether that meant that Mrs. X doesn’t play fun games, or whether that was a threat from my three year old along the lines of “I ain’t playin’ no games with you!”) So I ask as she drifts off to peaceful slumber, “how was school today?” “I had fun at school today, Daddy. I love you.”