Adventures In Bedtime

Every night that Ethan and I are both home for the kids' bedtime (which is most nights), we each put one daughter to bed.  The very vast majority of nights, Madeleine chooses me and Julia chooses Ethan as the parent to put her to bed.  Every once in awhile, the girls will change things up, but over the past few months there has been little variation, especially since Julia is deep in the thick of "The Chronicles of Prydain" series that Ethan has been reading her (and anytime I attempt to read it, she corrects me a thousand times because I don't pronounce the fantasy characters' names the same way Daddy does, EVEN THOUGH MY UNDERSTANDING OF THE WELSH ALPHABET IS BETTER.)

Therefore, Madeleine and I have fallen into quite a routine together.  Two books, lights out, prayer and a lullaby, then we snuggle until she inevitably conks out in my arms.

Sure, Madeleine doesn't fall immediately to sleep.  She has to go through her existential questions for 10-15 minutes as she yawns more and more often.

"Mama?  Why does every living thing DIE?"

"Mama?  Why were there ROCKS floating through space in DINOSAUR TIMES?"

"Mama?  Why don't boys have a special thing inside their tummies that let them grow babies?"  (This comes up frequently ever since I tried to explain a uterus to her.)

"Mama?  Why was there NOTHING and then it turned to the universe?"

Or, if she can't remember the above term:

MADELEINE: Mama?  What is space REALLY called?
ME: It's called space.  Outer space.
MADELEINE: No Mama!  What is space REALLY CALLED?
ME: It's called outer space.
MADELEINE: NO MAMA!  What is it REALLY CALLED?  The...the...the VERSITY?
ME: Oh, the universe?
MADELEINE: Yeah.  The universe.  Why was there NOTHING and then it turned to the universe?

At any rate, once she has exhausted herself with questions, Madeleine usually falls silent, and within a few minutes of becoming quiet she falls asleep.  I then make my exit and wonder why Ethan is still in with Julia for another half hour or so.

Tonight, Madeleine decided to get ALL wild and crazy and chose Ethan to put her to bed instead of me.  Therefore, I went into Julia's room with my Madeleine routine in mind, only to be re-reminded that Julia is an entirely different bird.

After reading her two books, doing a prayer, and (loudly, on her part) singing "The Rainbow Connection" together, I settled in for some snuggles.

I kind of forgot that Julia doesn't really do snuggles.  Not because she doesn't like them, because when she's ready to be still and calm, I can hardly pry her off of me as she lays snuggling me.  But she definitely does NOT settle the way Madeleine does after prayer and lullaby.  While Madeleine asks me her questions about the versity, we basically lay cuddled together, with her hardly moving.  Tonight I got to experience the Julia question/snuggle extravaganza, or what I would like to rename "Wiggle Wiggle Time."  Not only could Julia not stay still for a second, but even as I attempted to calm her and snuggle her, she was lapsing into squeals and giggles over things like "your NOSE is TICKLING ME!"

At one point, I tried to re-adjust her and get her head onto her pillow, which caused her to inform me, "I usually put my head right HERE (pointing to a place on her sheets below her pillows.)"

I should point out that Julia has FIVE pillows in her bed.  FIVE.  Should I ever attempt to move some off of her bed and onto the floor to make more body room, she can't handle it.  She feels compelled to sleep with every single one of her pillows in her bed with her, because she's kinda OCD like that.

Plethora of Pillows

It seems even more ridiculous now that I know that she DOESN'T ACTUALLY USE ANY OF THE PILLOWS.

ME: So wait a minute.  You have, like, a gazillion pillows in your bed, and you don't use ANY of them??
JULIA: (lapsing into giggles and then getting all wound up and even more unable to lay still and snuggle)

At any rate, as I type this, Julia is STILL awake, having visited the bathroom three times in the past ten minutes.  Meanwhile, Ethan and Madeleine are like this:

Speaking of Madeleine's bedtime routine, one of her favorite bedtime books lately is Shel Silverstein's "The Giving Tree."  Much to her delight, as we waited at the train station to surprise Daddy when he got off at his stop this evening, she actually encountered the Giving Tree!!

MADELEINE: Mama!  I found THE GIVING TREE!
JULIA: (with bored complacency) Madeleine, that's NOT the Giving Tree, it's just an old stump.
MADELEINE: No, Julia, it's THE GIVING TREE!
ME: Julia, remember how the Giving Tree is nothing but a stump at the end of the book?  So Madeleine is imagining this stump is the real Giving Tree.

Madeleine got WAY into her game with the Giving Tree.  Running over to sit with me on the park bench by the train station, she announced, "Mama, the Giving Tree is SAD because I went AWAY!"  In an attempt to make amends, Madeleine then began collecting handfuls of the little white wildflowers you can see in the above photo, and presenting them to the Giving Tree.  Kneeling beside the stump, she tenderly laid each flower, one by one, in a horizontal line across the stump.

And the tree was happy.