The magic hour

My kid wears me out.  The three hours between between the time we get home in the evening until I put her to bed are hers.  Please sit down and eat your dinner.  Don’t stand too close to the television.  Don’t jump on the chairs (“sit down or get down”), don’t touch Molly and then touch your dinner and don’t climb on the bar stools.  I’m sure I’m missing a few don’ts in there, but that’s pretty much what our evenings are like right now.  We’re just trying to contain the chaos.

I love bed time.  I love it not only because it means we finally get some peace and quiet, but it also means I finally get some wonderful time alone with my kid that doesn’t involve pleas, threats or exasperated sighs.  Bed time is when I read to my child and it’s one of those things neither of us likes to miss.

I love to read and always imagined my child would have a wonderful library of books from which we could choose our bed time stories.  Autumn does have a pretty good start on that library, but one thing I didn’t realize is that children, especially kids as young as Autumn, become married to their favorite stories and are reluctant to try out something new.  When you read to a toddler, you read the same books over and over again.

Luckily Autumn’s on a Dr. Seuss kick right now.  We started out with a board book version of A Wocket in My Pocket a few months ago and were faithful to that one until she shoved it behind the headboard of her bed one too many times and I refused to retrieve it (seriously, what is with this obsession with shoving things behind the bed?).  We then graduated to The Cat in the Hat and are now on to Sneetches and Other Stories.

It took some cajoling, but we’ve added Horton Hears a Who to our repertoire so that I’m not always reading the exact set of stories every night, though we always have to read about the Sneetches, the scary green pants (“What Was I Afraid Of?”) and the Zax.  I leave it to her to decide if we finish with a cat or an elephant.

Now that I’m reading stories to my child that involve a plot, conflict and resolution, I’ve sort of discovered my inner actor.  I don’t just read the words to her, I try to convey the emotion behind them.  And the look on her face as she responds to that emotion is delightful, as it is every time we get to this passage from “The Zax”"

And I’ll prove to YOU,” yelled the South-Going Zax,
“That I can stand here in the Prairie of Prax
For fifty-nine years! For I live by a rule
That I learned as a boy back in South-Going School.
Never budge! That’s my rule. Never budge in the least!
Not an inch to the west! Not an inch to the east!
And I’ll stay here, not budging! I can and I will
If it makes you and me and the whole world stand still!”

The first time I read this to her, I shook my finger and raised my voice to a bellow as I read the last two lines.  She loved it.  Loved it so much that she now shakes her finger with me and raises her voice in concert with mine so that there’s such a ruckus coming from her room you’d probably not believe we were actually settling in for the night.  A couple of times my reading has been rewarded with a high five or a “good job, Mamma.”  How about that?  My kid thinks I’m cool.

Tonight I’ll have to miss story time.  I’ll be in class and Nathan will have to take my place.  While it’s only one night a week, I hate missing it.  It’s one of the few times I actually enjoy being around my kid.  I know that sounds horrible, but she’s two.  I’m not going to lie and say being a parent to a headstrong toddler is just a big tasty sundae topped with a cherry that is a well-behaved child.  Our sundae has melted with ice cream dripping on the carpet and chocolate sauce smeared on the ottoman.  Nathan and I are just the bowl trying to keep it all from making a bigger mess.

Story time makes it all worth it though.  For thirty minutes or so every night, I become that idealized version of my parenting self I imagined when I first became pregnant and Autumn is the child I imagined I’d be reading to.  For thirty minutes or so every night, we are each other’s world and everything is perfect.