true colors.

There was a time where I imagined that bedtime would be a sweet moment where parent and child would lie in their fort telling make believe stories and whispering their hopes and dreams. So sweet. so magical. so.....unrealistic. Closer to the truth: I am lucky to get through the bedtime ritual without my kids milking the crap out of all of their stall tactics for an hour and a half before i finally duck tape them to the bed. Don't get me wrong, it always starts off with stories and kisses, but after the 17th time Adam or I have to walk downstairs to put them back in bed it is not so cute.

A few nights ago, in such a situation, I was putting Sheamus back down in his room when a hear a quiet Elyott voice calling me from her room over an hour after she should have already been asleep. Frustrated, I open the door to ask her why she was still awake.  She quickly flashed the book she had been looking at (a "fancy" dress up girl book) and so genuinely requested that she get to dress "exactly like the girl in the picture" for school the next day (we all remember making the "body-less outfit" on the floor of our room).  I looked closer at the book as she shyly held up this photo:

"Okay, we'll find something just like that in the morning" I said. To which she very serious and timidly pointed down to the floor, where I then saw this:

I absolutely laughed my face off. 

As a child Adam actually convinced his OLDER brother that they had distant black relatives in their ancestral line and that they, in fact, were 1/16th black. Perhaps Elyott overheard this rumor and is just trying to reconnect with her roots.  Black or not, this moment was pure amazingness for me.

"I want to be cute just like her! They have that makeup that you can use to make your skin brown like that" she quickly began innocently negotiating.  I didn't have the heart to tell heart at that moment that her school doesn't allow children to wear fake afro wigs while wearing, what racist folks used to refer to as, "minstrel paint" to class (although i suppose i had just heartlessly gone into hysterics at her choice of identity for the next morning, but i couldn't have helped that). 

So I concluded that despite all the protests, the light switching, the sneaking, the whining, the wiggling, the resisting brushing their teeth, the potty breaks, the bedtime drinks, the monster sightings, and all of our trips up and down the stairs.....that that night can be fondly remembered after all ;)

team boo ♥'s you