Each night, John's bedtime routine consists of brushing teeth while we sing Raffi's Song, "You Brush Your Teeth" but I change the words to apply to nighttime. Potty time. We might sing a fun/silly song. Currently we sing head, shoulders knees and toes. I sing, Seth does the motions (and sings) and John usually just laughs and sometimes does half the motions. Then, if I am feeling up to it, I play a children's primary song or a reverent hymn on the piano, and we sing. Or sometimes we'll just sing A Capella. We will read a paragraph and look at a picture from our Book of Mormon Stories Book, and then we will read one verse from The Book of Mormon in English and then the same one in Spanish. We have a picture of Christ as our bookmark, and it's John's job to take it our and put it back in. He calls Jesus "Kiki" because he can't say Jesucristo. (As a side note. In times of desperation, and John just needs to watch a video so I can make dinner, I usually put him in front of a Bible Video of the life of Christ. John LOVES them. He often wakes up and immediately asks for "Kiki" which means he wants to watch one of these videos. Here is one of his and my favorites.)
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(Last night, John threw the Jesus bookmark on the floor...) It is taking a super long time to read The Book of Mormon. We have gotten to 1st Nephi Chapter 20 now. Yesterday night, John was really having a hard time sitting still and paying attention, he eventually had such a tantrum that we just had to let him run around while we read the scriptures. We had to smile and laugh a little after we read the verse we were on: "And I did it because I knew that thou art obstinate, and thy neck is an iron sinew, and thy brow brass."
Very fitting. John fit that description pretty well last night
We often have to remind ourselves that consistency is what counts. John will not remember each verse we read or each lesson we taught him, but he will remember that we were consistent. That we made the Savior and the scriptures a part of our daily lives. He loves Jesus and knows that Jesus loves him and that he is a child of God. That's really what counts.
No matter how the scripture reading went, we always end with a family prayer. John can say "pray" now, and sometimes he bows his head and folds his hands, and at the end (or in the middle), he stretches out his arms and exclaims, "AMEN!" (It is so cute, sometimes I'll see him going around the house, and he'll bow his little head and then say "AMEN!" I love that he knows that prayer is an important part of our life.
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After our routine last night, we let tornado John run around to his hearts content. And run he did! Shouting "BALL! BALL! BALL!" and waving his arms, and jumping on Papa who was trying to rest on the floor. He was like a maniac. Then when he knew it was time for bed, he told us he had to go potty, and that he was hungry....nice try! He's so clever.
But apparently all that exercise was a good thing because he slept in until 8:00pm! Whoohoo! A record!
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