Real Moms Know Goodnight Moon by Heart

...and never tire of it.

Well, okay, I get do get tired of it but it's worth the joy my son gets from the story. I heard people joke about how you will receive multiple copies of Goodnight Moon for your baby. But we didn’t get a single one, so I went out and bought the cardboard baby version. When Bubba was tiny I read it to him as I nursed him to sleep in our bed. My husband would be asleep by before we even reached “Goodnight room”. Then Bubba started to stare at the pictures. One night he started smiling at the comb and the brush and the bowl full of mush.

Then our bedtime routine changed. Dad gave Bubba a bath, I massaged and dressed him, and the hardier of the two of us would hold and walk him while he cried and fussed his way to sleep. We didn’t read Goodnight Moon too often for a while there. A couple weeks ago I incorporated it back into the routine, after the massage and before the fussing. He never fails to smile when I wind up his musical dog and pull out the well-chewed Goodnight Moon. And smiles even bigger when I say "in the great green room..." Now he likes to turn the pages himself, randomly, and chew. I just recite the story. Finally he starts rolling around on the bed, and then crawls to me to let me know he is ready to start the process of fighting sleep.

Okay, yeah, it’s not exactly exciting reading the same thing every night two or three times. But I keep it interesting. Maybe it’s the randomness of the pages - I find myself wondering things. Like why would a little boy bunny have a phone by his bed? And why would the “old lady” leave a bowl of mush in his room? What were they doing between 7:00 and 8:10? Did she tell him a story in between “Hushes”? Wouldn’t the logs have burned down a bit? Why does a bunny, presumably covered in fur, need sheepskin slippers?

I’ll never know the answers, but I will always treasure the time we have spent reading Goodnight Moon. And I'm sure it will be just as thrilling when he reads it to me, over and over.

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