Bedtime is hard. Even when things are going relatively smoothly, it’s hard. There’s the sometimes bath, the wrestling into pajamas, the teeth brushing, the choosing of the stories, the arguing over the stories and the reading of the stories. Then there’s the tucking in and, of course, the delay tactics. Everyone’s exhausted, especially me. But every once in a while I insist on picking out the books so I can better enjoy the time spent discovering literature with my children. No offense, Dino Hockey, since you’re single-handedly teaching my son to read, but this is better:
The Engineer
by A. A. Milne
Let it rain!
Who cares?
I’ve a train
Upstairs,
With a brake
Which I make
From a string
Sort of thing,
Which works
In jerks,
‘Cos it drops
In the spring,
Which stops
With the string,
And the wheels
All stick
So quick
That it feels
Like a thing
That you make
With a brake,
Not a string . . .
So that’s what I make,
When the day’s all wet.
It’s a good sort of brake
But it hasn’t worked yet.