Somehow bedtime around here has disintegrated into a rigorous re-enactment of CSI: Miami with a dash of Last Comic Standing and a prodigious sprinkle of Amazing Race. I don’t know how it happened really; the whole crazy nighttime routine that recently spiraled completely into the nether regions of hell’s eternal fire.
Let me lay it down for you. This was last night:
Me and The Rock (in melodic and upbeat unision): Girls! Time for bed!
The Girls (falling prostate on the floor while beating their chests): Why God why? What did we ever do to you? Must you torment us so? Are you trying to make us die?
Me and The Rock (continuing to feign positivity): Ha ha! You should be actresses! OK. Time for bed.
The Girls (playing dead): Ahhhhhhhhhhh. Meeeeeehhhhhh. Bleeerrrrrrr. We are zombies. We don’t sleep. We eat people. They are delicious and chewy! Argh! Is this a people heart? It’s zesty and tangy!
Me and The Rock (concertedly trying to keep smiles on our ever-suffering faces): Oh you sillies. OK. Time for bed.
The Girls (crying voluminous tears): You don’t love us! Why don’t you love us? We love you. But you don’t love us!
Me and The Rock (adopting a serious, OK-we’ve had-it-now tone): Girls. Enough. It’s time for bed.
(Then I whisper guiltily:) But we do love you.
(And my husband says under his breath:) Don’t do that! They’ll know they’ve got you.
The Girls (making boo-boo kitty faces): Mommy? If you loved us, you’d let us stay up until the cows come home.
Me and The Rock (wondering when, exactly, cows come home): The cows have been home since 8 o’clock pacific time. Now get upstairs.
The Girls (making bizarre Paula Abdul-robot-jazz-hand motions): Bow! Ka-boom! Blah! Boo!
Me and The Rock (doing whatever people who lose their shit do): GET UPSTAIRS.
NOW!
The Girls (limply dragging their feet behind them): We broke our legs in a playground accident. We should go to the doctor.
Me (frustrated): So you both broke your legs? In a playground accident? How do you explain the fact that you go to different schools and thus have different playgrounds? When did this coincidental and simultaneous playground mishap occur?
The Rock (stupefyingly looking at me): Really?
The Girls (enthusiastically): So we can go to the doctor? Does he have lollipops?
Me and The Rock (completely and totally without our shit): LAST WARNING.
GET UPSTAIRS.
NOW!
The Girls (whipping a stuffed cat on each other’s faux broken femurs): Kitty Die-Die! Kitty Die-Die!
Me and The Rock (looking like Mr. and Mrs. Stoneface McSternerson): All right. ENOUGH. Let’s go.
The Girls (being carried upstairs): No! No! Nooooooooooooooooo! No! Nonononononononononononononono. NOOOOO! NO! NoooooNoooooNooooo.
Me and The Rock (wondering if that leave-your-kid-at-the-fire station law is still in effect): That’s it now. Get in bed. Be quiet. Go to sleep. See ya when we see ya.
The Girls (continuing to sob loudly and with verve): NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Nooooooo! NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! Noooooo! Nononononononononononono! NOOOOO!
Me and The Rock (to each other): You want a dart gun with that tranquilizer?
The Girls (blowing snot, rolling to and fro, kicking the mattress, spitting pea soup out their ears): You hate us! Hate us! HAAAAAAATTTEEEEE. Hate us. Why? Why? Why? We’re just kids! You are destroying our lives! *blubber blubber blubber*
Me and The Rock (gouging out the parts of our brains responsible for hearing stuff): QUIET! Or Kitty Die-Die gets it!
The Girls (quieting down) (still staying quiet) (not making a peep):
Me and The Rock (putting the brain-gouging implements in their respective Caboodles compartments): Ahhhhhh. Finally.
The Girls (calling out in a Rodney Dangerfield voice): Hey Smiley! Can we get a kiss?
Sadly, the preceding was entirely true without modification or comic exaggeration.
Send more dart guns and brain-maiming devices STAT.
I can so see this and how I wish I was there, sans my kid, so I could just sit back and laugh my ass off although your youngest would’ve never pulled that shit with me around.
By far the most entertaining read I’ve read all week! ahahahahahahahahahahahaha
You are too funny. (says the woman with no kids who has no experience in this stuff)
Oh how I feel your pain. That’s our night every night except I would add “Repeat 10x until girls give up out of sheer exhaustion.” And there is lots of vodka involved at our house. For Big Daddy and I. Not the girls. At least not yet.
I’ve never, ever taken for granted how easy my boys go to bed.
How can you keep a straight face with all that drama?
I would say that is pretty much a five star performance! So much fun when it’s ‘somebody else’s kids!’
And just think. You have tonight’s episode to look forward to! hahaha!
Ughhh…this is SO our house, times 2 more girls. “I didn’t give you a kiiiiiissss” – “Wait, I didn’t say my prayers LOUD enough” – “Can I have one more huuuuugggg?” Oy vey. We should invest in tranquilizer darts.
God, it would such fun to be a kid at your house! All kids would like parents like you to play with at bedtime. Like a cat playing with a mouse! LOL
You might want to start toting those little actresses to auditions. After all they put you through, they may as well make you some money! ;-)
We used to make ours sit in the hallway. Without toys or other distractions he’d eventually settle down, get bored and ask to go to bed. Just don’t forget you put them there or they’ll fall asleep and you’ll have to carry their dead weight to the bed. Not that I’d know first hand. :D
This is hilarious! I got lucky with my daughter, just had to read her a book, discuss her day, then my day, scratch her feet and back, tuck her in, find “blindie” (eye mask she insists on wearing even to this day!), find bear, let her get a drink of water, tuck her in, tuck her bear in, let her go potty, let her go tell daddy good night, tuck her back in, turn out lights, go back in ten minutes later, get her out of her closet and tuck her back in. We only did this from the age of 5 until she was 8 or 9. Now I just beg her to go to bed so I can go to bed.