Tonight I Mailed In “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”
{Mailing It In – Slang for doing the least amount of work possible or slacking off.}
We’re all parents, right? Let’s not sugar coat this then. I get tired by the time the kid’s bedtime rolls around some nights. Truthfully, I’m tired pretty much every night as the kids get ready for bed but tonight was a little different.
I didn’t have a good sleep last night because my daughter woke up at 11pm with nightmares and spent the night in bed with Mommy and Daddy. I know some of you don’t agree with letting your kids sleep with you but I’m not overly concerned with that.
Tonight, my wife went out to an ECE class and I was in charge of bedtime. This is not an unusual occurrence and I am more than capable of handling my children on my own. It was just one of those nights where I had absolutely nothing to give to anyone.
We played a rousing game of “Jump on Daddy while he lies on the floor”, then we played “Let’s see who notices we’re watching Doc McStuffins reruns”. We closed out the night with story time, which is usually immediately followed by a Canadian Idol style rendition of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”.
The only problem with that was that story time took up the little bit of energy I had left. Between that and the countless times I had to ask my son to get back into bed, I was completely drained. I’m not proud of what happened next but I’m only human and I know it’s happened to the best of us.
We got to the Twinkle, Twinkle portion of the evening and instead of the usual Michael Buble-esque performance they are used to, the kids got something that best resembled a performance by Oscar the Grouch, if he had tape over his mouth, and had forgotten the words, and yawned 30 times in the middle….Yeah, just bad.
Funny thing about my mailing in of our nightly tradition though, the kids didn’t seem to notice. If they did they certainly weren’t about to throw tomatoes or eggs at their Dad. This helped prove two things for me:
1. I AM in fact a rock star because I can turn the crappiest mood into solid gold!
2. Your kids will love you even if you aren’t 100% all the time. Plus, they know Daddy will knock it out of the park tomorrow to make up for it!
Cheers!
Awww. I love the morals of this story. Right now, our bedtime routine usually consists of me nursing and putting the baby to sleep while my husband wrangles the toddler. Afterwards, I usually peek in on toddler to say goodnight, and without fail, he asks for a song.
I have to admit, at the end of dealing with them and their antics and their noise (oh the NOISE!) all day, the last thing I want to do is sing the “Cameron song” (a modified version of a Dixie Chicks lullaby) with three verses and a repeated chorus. Sometimes, I don’t even want to sing the runner-up song, Twinkle Twinkle. But usually, I give in, and sing that little song, and all of a sudden I hear that little two-year-old voice singing with me and that noise isn’t so bad after all.
My son sings it with me most nights and I have to agree, it’s the greatest sound I’ve ever heard.
This is great. One of the hardest things to admit as a parent is that you don’t have the energy to match the expectations of your kids.
Equally important? Even when you are tired, you care and your kids do know. Cheers to you, my friend.
Thanks Cap! I have about one night every 6 months where I could go to bed at like 4pm and sleep until the next morning. Yesterday just happened to be that night. This morning, they forget, lol. Cheers!
Ah, but they may have preferred the Oscar the Grouch rendition!
I do a pretty mean Ernie 😀 The kids see my Oscar the Grouch impression enough. They don’t know it’s an impression, but they see it, lol.
Ahhh yes…those nights when lack of energy short change the kids. My husband and I have had those, and like you said, luckily the kids don’t usually notice. They must REALLY love us…or, (like I assume), we’re just plain AWESOME right? 😉
I think it’s a little bit of both, with the being awesome part covering 80%…. 😀
A Rock Star you definitely are! I love kids!!!!
twinkle twinkle is also fav. around here too….and part of our bedtime routine
Aww! Seriously you are an awesome dad, we all have days and nights where we are exhausted and are too tired to give 100%, especially around bed time. I know that for my hubby (he puts the kids to bed as I make lunches) he does a story, secret handshakes, gymnastics in bed, etc. that by the time he’s out of both kids rooms it’s an hour later and he is ready for bed and some nights he doesn’t do everything, but in the end the kids are just happy that dad tucked them in. 🙂
I too was having one of those nights, that was jam packed full of cleaning and school work left to the last minute kind of nights. I could of fallen asleep standing up and the kids knew it.
It is amazing how kids love even the smallest of things and know you still love them the hugest amount. Exhaustion gets the best of us! Tonight, you’ll just have to throw out a few hip twists and foot swirls, and they’ll never remember the latest rendition!
Don’t fret Chris, you the best Daddio around. I think you should record a Michael Buble rendition one of these times so when an exhausted night comes about again, or for our enjoyment, you can play it!
I think our kids need to understand that parents get tired too. It happens. And you are right, they love us anyway. 🙂
Way to be an awesome Dad.
Ah, it happens to the best of us Chris. Most nights I am the same way. Too darn tired to do anything. You just do the best you can with what you are given.
Yes, dads have that magic to turn crappy moods into happy ones.
Rock out Chris! Great post as always.
Great story Chris, love it! So cute and yes does happen to the best of us, some of us more than others more times than not lol. I’d like to hear you sing it! Come on – give it to me! lol
I can’t even count the number of times we played ‘jump on mommy while she lays on the floor’ raising three boys 3 and under and a hubby who was never home, I was tired 24/7 and we had our share of those days (and still do!)
Luckily my little one doesn’t request a song every night (although many nights she does) because there are those evenings where I can barely get two words out between the yawns! In fact some nights when I take her to bed I fall asleep in her bed before she does. Like last night actually. I woke up this morning to “mommy, wakey wakey” and a woke to the realization I had spent the entire night in her bed.
I love that the kids played jump on dad – that was brilliant on your behalf:)
Hope you can catch up on your sleep.
Thanks! Jump on Daddy is our favourite game… As for sleep, my daughter has started coming in our room every night around 1am, so it’s not in the near future, lol.
“Jump on Daddy” is always a hit, especially when I’m really tired.
AS for mailing it in (we say phoning it in, same thing), I do that with certain books that I find unreadable, because the prose or verse is jilted and awkward for whatever reason (I’m lookin’ at YOU, Jan and Stan Berenstain). To make my life easier, I just tell my own made up story rather than try to recite page after page of halting verse about Papa bear being an incompetent parent. Luckily my two-year-old isn’t old enough to notice my tweaks just yet, and hopefully I’ll get those bad-influence bears out of my house before he is.