“Mama – let’s have special time together, OK?”
“OK, sounds great!”
“Let’s snuggle and then you can scratch my back.”
“OK angel, let’s do it.”
“I want you to do five shapes, then five numbers, then five letters.”
“Sure.”
“No. How about seven shapes, then seven numbers, then seven letters?”
“How about five?”
“Mmmmm. How about three?”
“Excellent. Three it is….”
I then proceed to scratch variations of all of the above on her back while she delights in guessing what I’m doing. At age 3 1/2, she’s doing remarkably well at this little game. She consistently nails most shapes and certain numbers and letters (1, 2, 3, 4 and s, i, m, c, and x).
We’ve been doing this since I started working last week. It’s a bed time routine that feels fun and sweet for both of us and makes up for lost time together during the day.
Last night, it got sweeter. Her going-to-sleep stall strategy was unexpectedly quite brilliant. After a long series of “7 each” letter, number and shape back scratchings and two solid foot rubs, I said, “OK Angel Face, time to say ‘Good Night.’”
“Wait Mama! I want to scratch your back and rub your feet.”
(Um….ok!) “OK Sweetie, that sounds nice!”
I was already completely sold and wrapped around her finger when she enthusiastically scratched my back and rubbed my feet for 20 minutes straight. Then her sweetness doubled and I wished we could freeze time and snuggle up together in her twin bid forever.
She asked me to move my body so that my feet were more accessible to her for rubbing. I ended up rather contorted and she saw that my head was starting to fall of the edge of the bed.
“Mama, I need to hold on to you,” she said. “Because I really love you and I don’t want you to fall off.”
Call me Butter. I think I finally left her to sleep at 8:45 tonight.
