Every night, we have the same bedtime ritual with Charlie Jo. First, one of us reads her three books. At some point during the reading, the other parent joins the ritual already in progress after putting Petey down in his crib. After the three books are done, we turn all the lights out and each person has to tell a story. Usually, Charlie Jo insists Mommy and Daddy tell their stories first.
The only problem with this is that at any point in the story, CJ reserves the right to hijack the story and take over the narrative. She makes no apologies and fails to ask for permission -- she simply talks over me or Corey and takes the story in a new direction.
Her stories are complete with plenty of action, copious dialogue, and emphatic gestures (usually using both arms and legs, despite the fact that there are three of us lying on a little twin bed). She even speaks with different voices for each character. Sometimes, the plot and/or dialogue contain snippets of whatever TV show she watched that day, but she doesn't acknowledge the plagiarism. The derivative nature of her stories does not detract from their entertainment value, however. We usually leave her room still giggling about what we heard.
After the stories have been told (sometimes with me being forced to declare "THE END" to cut off a marathon story told by CJ), we say a quick little prayer and sing:
We love you Charlie (and Elephant and Octopus and whatever other stuffed animal she dragged into bed that night),
Oh yes we do-ooh,
We love you Charlie (et al.),
And we'll be true-ooh.
When you're asleep at night,
We're blue.
Oh Charlie Jo (et al.),
We love you [smooch smooch smooch].
I make no apologies for the fib in the song. We are not blue while Charlie is asleep at night -- we're exhausted and grateful for a little peace and quiet. I will give credit to "Bye Bye Birdie" as the source for the tune of the song. Well, it's either that or from my mom's stories about how she and her buddies would sing it as "we love you Beatles" during the height of Beatle mania.
[So far, we haven't developed a complex nighttime ritual for Petey Pie. All he gets is being rocked in the glider with a bottle and an a capella rendition of the alma maters from Vanderbilt, Michigan State, Duke, and Placer High School (also known in our household collectively as "singing pregame"). Then we lay him in the crib and hope he doesn't scream for too long (he never does). He's still in the stage where reading books to him is nearly impossible because he attacks the book and shrieks with frustration if you hold it out of his reach. He hears me read to Charlie Jo before her nap and at various times during the day, but I'm woefully neglectful in my campaign to get him to be as avid of a reader as Charlie Jo. Poor Petey.]
