November 27, 2004
Last night the monsters came...
... to our house and ate all the pacifiers.
Daddy beat the monsters with a stick, so they won't ever come back. But - we couldn't save the nu-nu's. (Pronounce "noo-noo".) The monsters ate them all. Not a single one in the entire house.
We got through the day all right. Pockets of screaming in the morning, mainly David, who doesn't understand the thing with the monsters but can say "nu-nu". We took the kids to the German-French Christmas bazaar in the morning where we bought a lovely wooden working bench for the boys for Christmas.
Then we went to the Village Museum to let them run around and wear themselves out.
That went well. David screamed some more in the car before falling asleep, but did fall asleep. Alan mumbled a lot about monsters (no, he's not afraid, he's just indignant) but napped for over two hours.
Now: bedtime. Things went well through the evening routine of bath, bottle, books. Now they are singing -- ABC-song; Twinkle, twinkle, little star; Meatball song. Alan is singing too -- that's a relatively new thing. He sings a lot in nursery school and now, that his mouth is free in bed, he joins in with his Dad.
It's nine in the evening and they are not sleeping yet. Watch this space.
Update: A few moments ago, Alan was talking to himself in bed. (He does that a lot.)
And I heard him say, "No monster eat my pillow!"
So I went inside and explained that I, Daddy, had hit the monster hard with a stick. And that the monster had run away very fast, and that it wouldn't be coming back. So that his pillow was safe. No monster would, no monster ever could, eat his pillow.
Okay?
A thoughtful pause.
"Okay."
Quiet now for the moment.
Update II. Quiet. They are sleeping, and without too much fussing.
We're waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Posted by claudia at November 27, 2004 08:45 PMSee, that's one of the drawbacks of living over on that side of the Pond. Over here, the Pacy (pah-see) Fairy comes one night and exchanges all the pacies for a cheap trinket from Wal-Mart. Very exciting, minimal trauma, gets 'em warmed up early to commercialism and terms-of-trade. Though we did end up having to explain why the fairy wouldn't fork over a second present when she found a straggler.
Off to put the giglets to bed...
Posted by: Bernard Guerrero at November 28, 2004 03:38 AMMy sister's mother-in-law used to call them "nookies," back when my sister's kids were little. (The oldest just turned 31, so that was Long Ago.)
Hooray for the brave Daddy who chased away the evil monsters so forcefully.
And hooray for little boys who can get to sleep without their "nu-nus", just like Big People do.
Hugs all around!
Posted by: Lois Fundis at November 28, 2004 08:49 AMOver here, the Pacy (pah-see) Fairy comes one night and exchanges all the pacies for a cheap trinket from Wal-Mart.
Oh, it's not the Pond. In Sweden, kids donate their pacifiers to a tree in Skansen park. The monster thing, we made up on a whim. We also decided the pacifier weaning on a whim. (Meaning, I took the pacifiers away from them in the morning and it proceeded from there.)
I'm not sure about the monsters myself, but heh. They slept, without waking up in the night. They haven't asked for nu-nus so far today. Alan's rash around his mouth is already fading (he's had that forever and yes, I knew it had to do with the pacifier -- I'm a bad, lazy mother).
It's going eerily well and we're asking ourselves -- was it just that we were cowards all along?
We'll see how the day progresses...
Posted by: Doug Muir at November 28, 2004 09:38 AMHm, that was me, posting that last comment. I didn't see that Doug was already logged in...
Posted by: claudia at November 28, 2004 09:40 AM