Alligator Kisses and Bedtime

Last week the weather was nice, so Liam wore shorts and sandals. We cleaned up the garden; there's no grass in our garden, so it just needed a good spring cleaning. Boys will be boys though. Liam fell and scraped his knees. In effort to make it better with as little drama as possible, we kissed his knees, now known as the garden owies.

Every day since then, he's asked for kisses on his knees. Then he added the tiny speck of an owie on his thumb. Who knows how that happened... and then the imaginary owie on his ear. Each one needed to be kissed before bedtime.

Then one night, Liam knew just how to make Grandpa (who broke his hip better).

"Liam airplane Grandpa's house. Grandpa owie hip. Liam kissies."

Lester now reports that he has an additional bedtime duty. Before Liam will go to sleep, Daddy has to kiss Chomp-chomp's knees. All four, and finding an alligator's knees isn't easy.

Bedtime is usually pretty easy for Liam these days. He likes singing.
"ABC song first, Mommy."
I start singing. By the time I get to D, he changes his mind.
"No Mommy, Farm song. Piggie."His tone suggests I've committed a grave mistake.
So I switch, and by the time I get to "Old McDonald had a farm E-I-E-I..."
"No Mommy, Itchy 'pider. No Farm Song."
Then we sing and sign The Itsy Bitsy Spider all the way through.

Afterward, we count to ten. Liam knows how, but for some reason, he really likes 2, 7, 8. Sometimes he also says 17.

me: one
liam: two
me:three
liam: seven, eight
me: four
liam: two, seven, eight
me: five
liam: six
me & liam together: seven, eight, nine, ten.

Fun part is... then we do it again, and he starts:
liam: two
me: two
liam: three
me: three
liam: four
me: four
etc...

If you ask him how many ducks are in the picture, he usually says (you guesed it...): two, seven, eight.

Then once we finish counting, in effort to postpone bedtime, Liam wants to recite the alphabet. He recognizes L for Liam and M for Monkey. I remind him that M also starts Mommy, but he denies the possibility.
"No Mummy, M Monkey, not Mummy."

Finally, I tell him to read books in his bed until he falls asleep. In his perfect world, we would read to him until he fell asleep, but as we have learned, that could take hours. So he reads to himself, sometimes out loud, which is too cute. After ten minutes, he's usually asleep. Some nights take a few trips out of bed, not even to protest really, but to check on us. We turn him around, and tuck him in again. After two or three bouts, he's asleep.

Then when we go in to turn off the light, we find all kinds of contraband under his pillow: cars and airplanes, paper cups and socks.