Bedtime Stories

I've recently started going to a monthly scrapbook crop with some ladies from our church. I look forward to it all month, and by the time it finally arrives, I am so excited that I can hardly concentrate on anything else all day. When Will heard I was going out that night, his immediate reaction was, "Will you be home in time to read to us?" Knowing that the scrapbooking deal ran until 10:30, I hedged with an evasive, "Possibly."

Bedtime stories are solely my responsibility, partly because Scott goes to bed earlier than the rest of us and partly because Will and Katie just prefer it that way. For the most part, reading bedtime stories is my favorite thing to do and bedtime my favorite time of day. We're relaxed and winding down; everybody is usually feeling snuggly and loving. Will likes funny books or adventure books, and we usually read a couple of chapters together. Then I head into Katie's room and we read a girly book. The girlier, the better. It's nice.

To be completely honest, though, some days I just want everybody to go to bed with a simple tuck-in. Some days I wish I could lay in my own bed and read a couple of chapters of a mom book, but by the time I've read to both children, Scott is completely zonked out, and only a crazy person would turn on a light and start reading at that point!

Anyway, I was having a good ol' time up at the church, and when 8:00 rolled around, I told myself that Will was really getting too old for bedtime stories. Surely he could tolerate Scott reading for one night, or even skipping the story all together. I could read to him the next night, if he still wanted a story. If he still wanted a story?? Where did that come from? When I realized that this could actually be the last night--or the last week, or even the last month--he wanted a story, suddenly I couldn't get home fast enough.

We read a little Melonhead.