When we moved the kids into separate rooms, we moved the bedtime story to the couch. Now, the kids lie on the couch while their mom reads them a story and sings songs, and then they go off to separate rooms.<\/p>\n
My routine is different than hers. I do the stories on the couch, with them sitting up. Then they go to their rooms and I give each one a bedtime song separately.<\/p>\n
The other night,\u00a0the kids were really tired when I was putting them to bed. I sat down on the couch, and they both laid down and put their heads on my lap.<\/p>\n
“Wait,” I said, pushing them off. “What are you doing?”<\/p>\n
My oldest blinked, clearly surprised I wasn’t momma, then started to giggle. “We always\u00a0do that!”<\/p>\n
“With Momma,” I said. “Not me.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
“But we’re tired,” my youngest said, smiling, “we need<\/em> to lay down.”<\/p>\n I grabbed a couch pillow and put it on my lap. “Okay,” I said. “This time. But this isn’t my thing.”<\/p>\n Giggling contentedly, they stretched out on either side of me, their heads so close together on the pillow\u00a0 that their scalps were almost touching. I recited Good Night Moon.<\/p>\n Then an evil thought swept through me. I don’t know where it came from, or why, but I really couldn’t help myself. I said the last words of Good Night Moon, “goodnight noises, everywhere,” and pushed them off the couch.<\/p>\n They hit the floor with two loud squealing thuds, then sat up, laughing so hard they could barely speak.<\/p>\n “Hey!”<\/p>\n “You can’t do<\/em> that!”<\/p>\n My oldest grabbed a couch cushion. I was laughing too hard to muster a Daddy voice, so I just slipped off my glasses and took the hit.<\/p>\n “Okay,” I said, “you got me. Time for bed.”<\/p>\n The youngest’s face was beet red. “You,” gasp, “pushed,” gasp, “us,” gasp, “off!” He collapsed to the floor, trapped in a full-body laugh.<\/p>\n “Go on,” I said. “Get to bed. I’ll be in to sing in a minute.”<\/p>\n I know, I know. I shouldn’t be pushing my kids off couches, but it sure was fun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Every once in a while, even the best of dads can be overwhelmed by a bad impulse. That’s normal, right? Right? Anyone?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[118,122,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-c","category-daddytales-n","category-daddytales-funny"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-lj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1321\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}