After Dana has handled the full day of workin' in a coal mine goin' down-down which can be some days of taking-care-of-Lauryn chores, I step in at night to help out and handle the nighttime bed routine. Now, the nighttime bed routine has evolved over these near 4 years to the finely honed, well-oiled machine that it is today and any variance of the routine is frowned upon by all parties. But particularly by Lauryn.

A typical nighttime routine starts sometime after dinner where -- if she's been good -- Lauryn scores, "A pink and a white and a calcium too!" (Frosted animal cookies and a gummi calcium vitamin.) Then it's off to her room for two bedtime books. Lauryn will suggest the books that she wants to read that night, and then I’ll lay them both on the floor of her room, side-by-side, and then one of her “guys” – some randomly chosen stuffed animal, arbitrarily selected by Lauryn using some criteria known only to her – will “pick” the first book that we read by being dropped onto the book. Following the first book, the “guy” will then be dropped on the second book to indicate that, yes, this is the next book that we’re reading.

When we finish the second book, we get changed into the nighttime sleeping pajamas, and then we go to brush teeth, which at some point we have started calling brushka-breeshka. (You’ve read my blog. Do you actually think that the random sing-songey ways don’t infiltrate my daily life?) One of Lauryn’s cousins, Kinsley, has a filling in her tooth, and when Lauryn saw this silver filling – what she calls a “silver teeth” – she asked what happened and I explained that a cavity was kind of like a small crack in the tooth that the dentist fixed with the silver filling. So part of the brushka-breeshka routine is that we want to do a good job brushing because we don’t want to get a crack. Or a silver teeth.

So following that, she gets on my back and then we go out to find Dana for a kiss and a final goodnight and then we go back to her room where I flip her into her bed with one of her “guys,” usually Pup-pup-pup-a-rillo (a little puppy), Otterey (an otter), or Tigress (a tiger). Then it is time for her prayers.

We are a very religious family and I am trying to get Lauryn to say her prayers each night to say what she is thankful for. She says a brief prayer first and then I close with a longer one. Usually she prays for things like, “Thank you for all the animals. Thank you for all the creations. Thank you for all the people you made.” But tonight’s prayer was just too awesomely derivative to not share. She starts off by saying, “Thank you for all the people; thank you for Bella and Quinten (two of her friends) and for me…Lauryn.” That she identified herself was, well, awesome. Then she comes out with the home run prayer line of all time and says, “And thank you for the money, money, money. All the piles of money.”

Now, I’m not sure what family that Lauryn is living with, but obviously they are quite wealthy. With piles of money just lying around. So much money that it required a quadruple mention to encapsulate all of its moneyness. So, to Lauryn’s mystery family, I say “Thank you!” for taking such good care of our daughter. Andif some of those piles should happen to get in the way, feel free to send some back with her.