bedtime ritual

as a stalling tactic, our children have developed this ridiculous ritual of putting their stuffed animals to bed. they change the configuration EVERY night and then decide where they are going to sleep.

for example, below, you see that ethan has given the top portion of the bed to the animals, thus squeezing himself on the bottom portion of the bed almost about to fall off. and if it's not done the way they wanted to, they freak out.

ethan was obsessed about blankets being completely flat for a while and drove us totally crazy. while we were putting him down, he would demand the blanket to be "fwatter, fwatter!!!! fwatter, fwatter!!!!" the person who was putting him down for the night usually gets so annoyed that the other person has to intervene and continue with flattening the blanket. thank goodness that phase is over - he would come out middle of the night screaming - "the blanket is not FWAT!!!! it's all wrinkleddddddddd!!!!" and one of us has to go fix it and remind him that the blanket cannot be flat when he is in it. kraygee.

ethan is happy with tonight's configuration with snoopy and bear tucked inside the pillow
makayla putting the baby blanket over her koala before she slides into her blanket. makayla's ritual is much tamer though for a while she was collecting all kinds of toys under her bed like a bag lady. that drove our cleaning lady batty. today she only has a colored picture of hello kitty by the foot of the bed - progress, i tell you.