bedtime highs and lows

Bedtime with Jed can either be really funny or really terrible. I think it's just par for the course with an almost-three-year-old...or any kid. They're certain you're doing something incredibly fun after they're in bed for the night, so they fight tooth and nail to avoid bedtime as long as possible.

Jed employs a lot of stalling tactics. One is that he needs about a million drinks. Another is that he must brush each tooth individually and thoroughly. Yet another is the old "I'm so adorable, I must give you lots of kisses" routine. The latest trick up Jed's sleeve is taking a long time to decide what shirt he wants to wear to bed. It's never an actual sleeping shirt; usually it's that day's t-shirt, covered with dirt and food and who knows what else. It drives me a little crazy, since he's all clean and smelling sweet, but it never killed a kid to sleep in a dirty shirt.

Last night's fashion statement, aided and abetted by Daddy. Jed still refuses to pull his pants up by himself, or even attempt to put them on at all, so Dave helped him out. Jed thought the high pants were hilarious.

Once the shirt for bed was on, there had to be lots of smooches. Jed is really into giving all sorts of kisses--blow kisses, raspberry kisses, extra long kisses, he does them all. Last Saturday night we had the adult session of our Stake Conference and Jed came because I forgot to find a babysitter. He gave me about a 5-minute smooch during one of the talks, then told me "good kisser!" Indeed.

Then we had a bit of playtime. It's always fun--for a while, and then things deteriorate fairly quickly, til Jed is unhappy, Dave is unhappy and I am unhappy. But the good parts of bedtime usually make up for the bad parts of bedtime.

Tell me it's this way for everyone, please!