Curious Norah

Every so often, a change organically alters Norah's bedtime routine-- a new fondness for a particular book or stuffed animal or boredom with old habits or new-found necessity on our parts. For quite a while now, we have done our best to establish C as the primary facilitator of the routine. We began this in anticipation of Nolan's arrival. Some nights it was better received than others.

Recently, Norah has taken a liking to her Curious George anthology. The new routine has become that she gets three George stories before bed. Now, being teachers, we rarely actually read the stories. We use the pictures to summarize the events and give opportunities for Norah to identify images, make inferences, and add her own ideas. C is a master of framing sentences so that Norah will fill in the blanks. Listening to them at night is hilarious. I will hear the consistent melody of Chris's voice punctuated by an emphatic, "OH NO!" or an excited, "Chocolate!" or a convincing, "Ooh-ooh-ah-ah!" or a somber, "George is sad."

One night, she was adamant that she wanted one more and so C promised her that if she climbed into bed and he turned out the lights, he would tell her a story about Norah and George. Thus a tradition was born. The Adventures of Curious George and Norah follow a pretty traditional arc-- exposition, conflict, rising action, resolution. No doubt Chris's expertise at these tales is informed by his background in improvisation. Again, the most special part about it is Norah's participation. With his leads, she is able to choose other characters, raise the stakes, and find solutions to the problems. I give my kid a lot of credit, but sometimes it surprises even me the things she is able to come up with.

Clearly, this time is special to Norah, too. I can't remember the last time we had to fight to get her to go to her room, especially since bedtime became synonymous with story time.

The past couple nights, Norah has asked for me to put her to bed. I do fine with the book, but when it comes time for her customized tales, mine pale in comparison to her Dad's, and I think she knows it, but she is too kind to say.