Due to scheduling issues, I’ve been the one putting the kids to bed lately. This is not a problem. In fact, I enjoy it. There’s something special about that time when they’re in bed but not quite asleep.<\/p>\n
My oldest, though, has started to master the art of the stall.<\/p>\n
As soon as I turn out the light, he starts talking. At first, it was just random stuff, but then he discovered that there are certain topics I am less likely to interrupt. I caught on to him, of course, and developed my “that’s nice, see you in the morning” routine to a fine art.<\/p>\n
The other night, my wife was home. She took the big guy to bed while I tucked in his little brother. When I came out, I heard the big guy talking earnestly to her about the day’s activity. The light was out and she was standing halfway to the door, listening.<\/p>\n
I could tell he was just getting warmed up.<\/p>\n
Sneaking behind his bureau, I picked his crocs off the floor, then tossed one high overhead. It arced over my wife and landed on his bed with a thump.<\/p>\n
He stopped midword, then sat up. “What was that?” he said. “Did you see that? What was that?”<\/p>\n
\u00a0I tossed the other one. In the darkness, the navy crocs were practically invisible.<\/p>\n
“Ah!” he shouted. “What’s going on?”<\/p>\n
“Got you,” I said, herding my wife out of the room. “Now go to bed.”<\/p>\n
“Da-ady!” He glared at me. “Really? Really?”<\/p>\n
“Good night, chatterbox.”<\/p>\n
He gave\u00a0a frustrated groan and lay back on his bed.<\/p>\n
Score one for the daddy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Our bedtime routine seems to be constantly changing. This latest change, though, probably won’t stick. Enjoy!<\/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":[123,118,120,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-cute","category-daddytales-c","category-daddytales-embarassing","category-daddytales-funny"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-8EY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33292","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=33292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33292\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}