Olivia!
Abbie has a set bedtime routine. I change her into pajamas, brush her teeth, read to her, and set her down at exactly the same time every night. I imagine prisoners are treated in much the same way except their bedtime song is less cheerful.
I read two books to her every night. It used to be the same two books every night, but some time back Abbie’s intelligence level surpassed that of a goldfish and she started recognizing that her first book, a flap-filled treatise on the game of peek-a-boo, signaled an imminent bedtime. In response she began doing everything in her power to stall me and impede the approaching lights-out. While I tried to coax her into lifting a flap to determine where the baby was, she would turn her back to me busily searching for a new book to read. She would find the oddest books to read; books she had no interest in touching the rest of the day suddenly became enthralling reading. She would grab books with regular paper pages instead of her normal thick cardboard pages that are almost destructible unless she chews on them, which she inevitably does. She would open up books intended for grade schoolers with far more words than pictures on each page and sit there engrossed in the sheer magnitude of words as if she understood them all. She will occasionally grab my finger and point it at something trying to cajole me into naming an object from the non-bedtime book. Meanwhile I would sit patiently waiting for her to lift a flap so I could exclaim “peek-a-boo” and continue the march to bedtime.
Now I’ve given up on the peek-a-boo book; I declare the first book she grabs at night to be her first bedtime book. This way I can sneak her bedtime up on her, winding her down for the day with a little reading without tipping my hand to the impending bedtime, like shining a light in a frog’s eyes to paralyze it before capture. I still read the same second book to her every night, though. Long ago I chose the book “Olivia” to be her bedtime story, and until she tells me she wants something else using actual words, that’s what I’m going to keep using. I want to use the same book every night as a signal that bedtime is coming, like I’m saying, “quit your whining” with enchanting tricolor charcoal drawings. For non-breeders or others who have somehow escaped knowledge of the book, “Olivia” is about a girl pig named Olivia* who would be about 4 in human years, but is still well short of prime pork chop age in pig years. It tells the story of her life, about her family, her trips to the beach, and her hatred of naps. The story is told in short sentences that meander from topic to topic, exactly like a book a four-year-old would write if she could complete several grammatically correct sentences and then engage in an aggressive marketing campaign that includes related merchandise like calendars, plush dolls and spin-off books about counting and opposites.
I chose “Olivia” as her final bedtime book because the last few pages deal with Olivia’s bedtime routine, which feels more appropriate than the 20 flowers or the zizzer zazzer zuzz on the last pages of her other books. I’ve stuck with “Olivia” as the final book even though Abbie now recognizes it as the final horseman of the bedtime apocalypse and furiously searches for anything to obstruct its reading: Toys, stuffed animals, novels I left on the floor. I keep reading because I know she can’t resist the story of Olivia’s life. To prove it, I’ll hold the book up to her after finishing a page and she’ll usually look up from her toy, turn the page, then return to her toy. After finishing the book, she redoubles her efforts to find stall time, but when Warden Daddy says lights out, it’s lights out.
* Duh.
I read two books to her every night. It used to be the same two books every night, but some time back Abbie’s intelligence level surpassed that of a goldfish and she started recognizing that her first book, a flap-filled treatise on the game of peek-a-boo, signaled an imminent bedtime. In response she began doing everything in her power to stall me and impede the approaching lights-out. While I tried to coax her into lifting a flap to determine where the baby was, she would turn her back to me busily searching for a new book to read. She would find the oddest books to read; books she had no interest in touching the rest of the day suddenly became enthralling reading. She would grab books with regular paper pages instead of her normal thick cardboard pages that are almost destructible unless she chews on them, which she inevitably does. She would open up books intended for grade schoolers with far more words than pictures on each page and sit there engrossed in the sheer magnitude of words as if she understood them all. She will occasionally grab my finger and point it at something trying to cajole me into naming an object from the non-bedtime book. Meanwhile I would sit patiently waiting for her to lift a flap so I could exclaim “peek-a-boo” and continue the march to bedtime.
Now I’ve given up on the peek-a-boo book; I declare the first book she grabs at night to be her first bedtime book. This way I can sneak her bedtime up on her, winding her down for the day with a little reading without tipping my hand to the impending bedtime, like shining a light in a frog’s eyes to paralyze it before capture. I still read the same second book to her every night, though. Long ago I chose the book “Olivia” to be her bedtime story, and until she tells me she wants something else using actual words, that’s what I’m going to keep using. I want to use the same book every night as a signal that bedtime is coming, like I’m saying, “quit your whining” with enchanting tricolor charcoal drawings. For non-breeders or others who have somehow escaped knowledge of the book, “Olivia” is about a girl pig named Olivia* who would be about 4 in human years, but is still well short of prime pork chop age in pig years. It tells the story of her life, about her family, her trips to the beach, and her hatred of naps. The story is told in short sentences that meander from topic to topic, exactly like a book a four-year-old would write if she could complete several grammatically correct sentences and then engage in an aggressive marketing campaign that includes related merchandise like calendars, plush dolls and spin-off books about counting and opposites.
I chose “Olivia” as her final bedtime book because the last few pages deal with Olivia’s bedtime routine, which feels more appropriate than the 20 flowers or the zizzer zazzer zuzz on the last pages of her other books. I’ve stuck with “Olivia” as the final book even though Abbie now recognizes it as the final horseman of the bedtime apocalypse and furiously searches for anything to obstruct its reading: Toys, stuffed animals, novels I left on the floor. I keep reading because I know she can’t resist the story of Olivia’s life. To prove it, I’ll hold the book up to her after finishing a page and she’ll usually look up from her toy, turn the page, then return to her toy. After finishing the book, she redoubles her efforts to find stall time, but when Warden Daddy says lights out, it’s lights out.
* Duh.
posted by Matt at
9:35 PM
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