Bedtime

    Putting Clara to bed used to be a major undertaking.  We'd read her ten to twelve books.  She'd have a "'nack," usually a banana or some graham crackers.  We'd rock briefly in the glider while she stared at the underwater scene her Fisher Price projector shone on the ceiling.  Ugly Baby, her favorite doll, needed to be rocked.  Afterwards, she'd hand the doll to Simon for safekeeping. He would hold it in his customary fashion, with its head wedged between his cheek and shoulder, and its body hanging limply down his chest.  He needed his hands free to select books and tuck the blankets under her crib mattress.
     Then we'd stand at her window and say goodnight to all the things outside: dogs, cats, trees, shrubs, sticks, rocks, neighbor's shed, fish weathervane on top of neighbor's shed, grapevines, bugs, moon and "luna," which is the Spanish word for moon.  At that point, Simon, who likes to play around with words, liked to chime in, "Good-night, Tom Luna." (Tom Luna is the superintendent of Idaho schools.  Not a bad guy, but his degree is not in education, as one might presume. It's in "weights and measures." He got it online.  I wonder if, in some corner of his unimaginative heart, he feels a warmth each night.  The warmth of the Shifrin family wishing him a good night's rest.)
    After saying goodnight to everything outside, we'd sing "A Bushel and A Peck." Then Simon and I would each have to kiss and hug Clara five or six times before finally putting her into her crib.  As we left her room, she'd scream baby obscenities at us, usually including the phrase, "Nai no wannu!" and "MommyMommyMommyMommyMommy!!" Sometimes also, inexplicably, "Abu Dhabi!!!!"
     It couldn't go on like that.
    "We need to spend less than an hour and a half putting her to bed," I told Simon. "It's like a marathon.  I'm so exhausted afterwards that I sit and stare at the wall."
    We brought the book count down to three.  Snack could be eaten concurrently.  Teeth could be brushed efficiently by pinning baby to the ground and injecting levity by first softly "brushing" nose, elbows and knees.  Window routine could be done away with altogether.  Screw Tom Luna.  Clara elected to drop, "A Bushel and A Peck." She seemed to find it tiresome.
     These days, we finish the third book and Clara says, "Bed."  She lets us each kiss her once.  If we try for another, she pushes us away with dimpled hands.  I think she's grown averse to Simon's scratchy beard and my chronic bad breath.  She arranges her stuffed animals on one side of her crib (they take up an entire half).  Carefully buried underneath the animals are her Winnie the Pooh figurines, a book called, "Good Dog, Carl," and her favorite rubber ducky.  Any attempt to dis-assemble the arrangement brings strong protestations.  She carefully puts her sippy cup on top of her stuffed dog each night.
     Then she points at the projector.
     "'Ic," she says.  We turn on the music dial.
     She balls two blankets (a soft pink one, and a brown one from her great-grandma Nina) in her arms and looks at us.
     "Out," she says.  If Wilbur is still in the room, she says, "Dog, out."
     Then she drops like a WWE wrestler into the corner of the crib, landing so her head is perfectly wedged into the folds of her crib bumper and the blankets are piled next to her.  And that's how she falls asleep.