The “stall” in hacky-sack or soccer juggling parlance is a
slick move as any late 80’s/early 90’s University of Vermont hippy worth his
weight in patchouli and Phish bootlegs would tell you. Basically one’s foot catches the ball/sack on
its free fall in such a way that the foot moves downwards at exactly the same
speed the ball/sack had been previously traveling. Suddenly, foot and ball/sack pause together as
if hovering, until the foot re-launches the ball/sack[1]
upwards. A power knee stall takes this
move into an evern more impressive dimension, but I’m ready to move on.
When the bedtime hour arrives at our house, Greta has become
a master of her own stall move. As the
eldest of her siblings, she has the right to be last to bed. But still, she stretches those last few
minutes into marathon sessions sometimes.
She’s crafted a routine that has become standard operating procedure.
First, we lay in bed together. She wants to pretend that we were asleep, but
we woke up because we had a bad dream and we have to tell each other what the
bad dream was about. I try to avoid
zombie apocalypse scenarios – to ensure she will eventually fall asleep – and focus
more on nightmares appropriate for a four year old. My examples might involve something like an
ice cream cone that topples over. Or
crashing on a bicycle. Or a toilet that
overflows a bathroom, creating a river pouring through the ceiling of our garage. (Oh wait, that last one actually just
happened in our house on Friday night.) Greta will then share her bad dream, which
oftentimes resembles my bad dream but with slightly different details.
To distract ourselves from the bad dreams, Greta calls for a
moment of silence for us to reflect on happy thoughts. After sufficient time has passed, she always
makes me go first and divulge what my happy thoughts were. On a good night, I try to come up with
something new and unique. On most
nights, though, I fall back on the old reliables: unicorns, rainbows,
butterflies, flowers, fairies, ice cream, playgrounds, etc. Following my lead, Gigi’s turn will coincidentally
involve purple, pink, and polka-dot versions of whatever we’ve just
discussed. It’s classic.
For the grand finale, we negotiate a song list. If I’m grumpy or if she’s at her max, we pick
one song and call it a night. If we’re
in a good place, I try to max the concert at three songs. Most frequently, the trifecta involves “Do-Re-Mi,”
the infamous “Cheerios” song we invented a couple of years ago, and “Show Me
the Way to Go Home.”
Next come hugs and kisses, an exchange of “I love you”’s, activating
the sound machine, and turning on the glow in the dark lady bug. The door closes.
Every once in a while, as THE WIFE and I are cleaning the
fallout from dinner and just dying to sit on the couch, we’ll hear whimpering from the
corner bedroom. Usually, the excuse is a
forgotten stuffed animal. Other times,
she has to pee. Or she’s thirsty. Or she’s upset because I didn’t sing one of
the songs she wanted. The more tired she
is, the more obscure the excuse.
We’ll see how long this current routine plays out. I’m not sure how old Gigi will be when the
routine becomes too juvenile. Fortunately,
if my oldest daughter is anything like her mom, then at least I know we will
debate that it is time for bed when she falls asleep on the couch.
Sweet dreams and happy thoughts. I’m off to get some Zzzs.
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