There’s nothing quite like bedtime. The child, having been at school all day, wants to spend as much time as possible screwing around with Mom and Dad and playing with his toys in his room. Mom and Dad, on the other hand, are thrilled to play but equally relieved to tie things up at the end of the night to, perhaps, squeeze in a half a minute of adult time before inertia prevails. So it goes that there is a bit of back and forth with regard to each side pursuing its own motives. Usually it is the side with the largest energy reserves that wins (care to guess which side that is?!)  But I digress…

So, during our final lights-off-laying-on-the-bed-together moments, Eli is playing with a tiny flashlight that he’s shining, in an alternating fashion, on his ceiling then his wall. As he’s pointing it way up to the ceiling, he says, “Wow, look at the moon – we are SO close to it!” Then he points it to the wall right next to his bed and says, “Oh, now we are so FAR AWAY from the moon…”  At first I didn’t get it, but then I asked him, “Oh, are we far away from the light on the wall because it is so small, and close to the light on the ceiling because it is bigger??” And he says, “Yea” (like, DUH mom!). I thought it was pretty clever, but maybe it was just fatigue…

Later, after we thought Eli had gone to la-la-land, we hear a bunch of banging around and see that the light is on in his room. I go in – “Hey, what’s going on here? I thought you were in bed?!” And, he says, “Mommy, you know what? Batman saw the light (from Eli’s flashlight) on the ceiling and thought it was the moon and was scared, but then Robin flew over and turned on the light and the moon went away and he wasn’t scared anymore!” Whew…

Finally I departed and ran a bath. Again, we hear banging, and Scott investigates. Eliot’s door has a big gap at the bottom, so Scott peers under and sees Eli playing some more with Batman and Robin. He decides to take a picture or two on the sly, but Eli notices something and comes over to the door. All Scott can see are these little toes poking out from under the door. Scott grabs them and Eli jumps back. Then sloooowly the toes come forward again and now it’s a game of toe keep away. All I can hear from the bathtub is a bunch of laughing and screwing around.  geesh…

Some pics of the under-the-door mayhem:

– amy