It's amazing how well of a job that Nico stalls and innocently manipulates us to creating routines. His bedtime routine has become a legitimate 30 minute ordeal.
Once it is announced in multiple stages, i.e. 10 min warning, 5 min warning, then "setting the alarm" which is 2 min, he continues to be annoyed over the concept of going to bed.
He gets on David's back to walk up the stairs, because I am the monster that is going to chase him and try to pinch him. The first stop is the bathroom for him to brush his teeth and pee. That takes easily 6-8 minutes to accomplish, because he likes to sit or stand on the counter and make faces at himself and laugh.
Once we make it into his room, it's time for what he refers to as "nighttime stuff." These words have become the devil. "Nighttime stuff" refers to the variety of activities that we must do before we enter the calm down phase.
The options of nighttime stuff include but are not necessarily limited to:
1) Sprinting across his room and headfirst sliding into his beanbag
2) Sprinting across the room trying to avoid our outstretched arms
3) Playing monkey in the middle (he's the monkey) as David and I throw the beanbag back and forth
4) Jumping off his bed into a pile of pillows that he refers to as poop, and then he has to run across the room to the pretend carwash
5) Jumps off his chair over the small rug, which is the pirana pit
6) Playing hide and seek
a) in the dark with flashlight, where David is the monster and we have to find him
b) in the dark without flashlight, where we hide and David the monster finds us
Once the 5-10 minute nighttime choice has come to an end, he usually stalls and asks for just one more time of whatever he is doing, and we can't help but shake our heads every time and think how ridiculous this whole thing has become. When he realizes we really aren't going to give in to his antics any longer, he lays down in the beanbag for David to lift him up and let him turn off the ceiling fan light.
It now becomes song time with mommy, and I must lay down on the ground next to him. Our songs have been the same, and within the same order, for many months: The "I love Nico" song that I made up forever ago, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and Itsy Bitsy Spider. We then play a naming game of animals. He is able to chose the type of animals that we name, such as zoo, water, red, etc. The final phase of songs then begins, but this requires me holding and rocking him like a baby with his blanket and an additional white blanket on top. The two songs are a few lines from "Wagon Wheel" and a line of "Rockabye baby."
I drop him into his bed, tuck him in, and proceed to give him a high five, knuckles and a kiss. He sometimes pretends to mess up on any of these so it requires starting over.
I finally leave the room, and it's David's fun turn for brief songs, the animal naming game of animals that were not previously named with me, and the highfive/knuckles/kiss series.
A minute after it's all said and done, we often will hear him yell "Goodnight mommy/daddy" and if you do not say it back, he will continue to yell it, but louder.
What have we gotten ourselves into?!?! I keep telling myself that I will also miss all of this one day...
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