Creativity Only Comes at Night...

Nighttime is a funny time around these parts. Once Joel senses the clock is approaching 7 pm, he gets excited: Alone time for Mom & Dad! I have to admit that I do too. There is this atmosphere in our house of a race being lost by some kid, "Hurry, hurry Camryn, JD is winning!" Or, "The person who gets ready for bed first, gets to snuggle with Mom the longest!" The latter usually being the true motivator. It's kind of cute actually. I love the fact that JD and Camryn fight over who gets to win the longest snuggles from Mom or Dad.

Inevitably, Camryn gets to bed first and once her book is read and she burrows into bed, she wraps her arms around my neck and refuses to let go. She pulls me down so that I'm practically laying on top of her, wraps her arms around me and then whispers in my ear, "Tell me a story Mommy." I hate that my first reaction is, "Ugh, why do I have to do this...I just want to go downstairs and hang out with Joel." Since my prime motivation for most things is guilt, I usually give in and say, "OK." This is how a typical story goes:

Mom: "Once upon a time, there was a beautiful girl named ____________."
(I wait for Camryn to give me a name).

Camryn: "Ummm," (as if in deep thought)...she'll pick one of 3 names:
"Gabby", "Ballerina Zoe" or "Princess Fairytopia."

Mom: "OK, and Ballerina Zoe lived a beautiful land called ____________."
(I wait for Camryn to give me a place).

Camryn: "Ummm," (as if in deep thought)...then she'll usually say Fairytopia.

At this point I proceed with a very creative rendition of the adventures of Ballerina Zoe, or Gabby or Princess Fairytopia in the land of Fairytopia. By this point, JD has hopped into bed and is intently listening to Mom's fable:

JD: "Mom, will you snuggle with me."

Mom: "Yes, for a little bit." Again, motivated by guilt.
I say this while I'm trying to figure out a sneeky way to break free of Camryn's death grip around my neck.

As I continue on with my tale, it inevitably turns towards potty talk. As I begin prompting my kids for more plot to the story, they both head down the "poop, pee and gas" track. I usually cut them off by saying something very motherly like, "Cut the potty talk," or, "I'm done if you keep it up." Last night however, I decided to go with it. The story quickly turned from a nice little bedtime story to a platform for JD and Camryn to make each other giggle with potty words:

Camryn: "And then she pooped out of her eye!"
(both laughing hysterically)

JD: "And then she gased and her head blew off and poop flew all over the place."
(again, both laughing hysterically)

Now I allowed them to morph my innocent fable for a bit longer until I couldn't stand it any longer and I said, "And then she gased and it blew up the whole world!" Whoa, that was it, JD about lost it. He was laughing so hard he said, "Mom, I think I peed a little bit!" Anyway, as you may have guessed, I'm sure I opened up a can of worms with that story, but it was pretty funny. Some people just shouldn't have kids.