Reason #145 – I give my son nightmares

Reason #145 – I give my son nightmares

Mar 16

I don’t need to tell you a lot about our nightly struggles to get C to sleep. If it was bad when he was a gremlin baby, it’s worse now that he’s a full-blown monster toddler – he is his mama’s son after all, and he refuses to let the party end till he’s good and ready.

Which is never.

Sigh.

(Oh, Berlin nightlife, those were the days!)

I’ve tried bedtime routines, drugs, inappropriate books, songs, letting him cry until he pukes it out, the works. And now it’s twice the fun, since the Dane is joining us for bedtime fun and stories and games, all in the hope that he will someday be able to replace me in bedtime duty. At least that is my hope.

Our new routine starts with dinner, followed by a lengthy bath, a story or two and then ending with bed and bottle. C LOVES it. Until the bed part, that is, at which point he becomes vociferous, calling for his lawyer and demanding habeas corpus and denouncing unlawful imprisonment without trial.

17-month old political activists are not fun.

And so two nights ago I exhausted the usual suspects: neither Stone Temple Pilots, nor consumptive lepers and not even Bon Iver were cutting the bedtime cheese. C wanted up, and egad, he was gonna get up if he had to kill me.

Suddenly, from I don’t know from which depths of my subconscious, this sprang out:

“There are few who deny in what I do I am the best, for my talents are renowned far and wide…”

By the time I had finished the song, C was toast.

Halloween toast.

If you haven’t seen The Nightmare Before Christmas do yourself a favour and go rent it NOW (and if you decide you want to buy it, why not use our Amazon link?). And if you have, please join me in a rousing chorus:

“I’m a master of fright and a demon of light, and I’ll scare you right out of your pants!“