7:00pm Storytime begins. Nora lays playing with a small flashlight while I read the Flopsy Bunnies.
7:05pm Nora claims she is tired and wants me to stop reading. I turn out the light and we lay in bed while she plays with the flashlight and is repeatedly warned against kicking her sick daddy.
7:25pm Nora asks to move to her bedroom. We stop to go potty. I begin to hiccup.
7:30pm Nora and I lay in her bed. She mimics my every hiccup. I use hiccups as an excuse to leave her bed.
7:35pm I decide cereal is the perfect hiccup cure and eat a very small bowl. Hiccups are still heard from Nora’s bedroom.
8:00pm I am in bed reading tweets and all is quiet from Nora’s room. I can hardly believe my good fortune that she is asleep by eight.
8:02pm Nora bellers from her bedroom, “Mommy or Daddy!”
8:03pm Nora is wide awake and demanding a snuggle. I lay with her for a few minutes, then make an excuse that Hoover needs to be let outside.
8:15pm Nora bellers down the hall again. I walk halfway down the hall and use my sternest voice to call, “Nora, go to sleep.” To my amazement, this works.
8:30pm I’m pretty sure this is when I fell asleep.
10:30pm Hoover wakes me up to let him outside.
1:30am Nora calls out from her bedroom. I drag myself to her bed. She winds herself around me and seems to fall back to sleep.
1:32am Nora sleep talks, “Mommy, all the bears died.”
“Go to sleep,” I whisper.
“Mommy, all the bears died.”
“How?”
“They just died, so don’t worry about it.”
1:35 I drift off to sleep, wondering what happened to the bears.