Bedtime

A bit like his daddy, Sava is a creature of habit and routine. He is especially fond of his bedtime routine, which involves drinking one of his two daily cups of rice milk and reading three books with one of us (and, lately, with both of us, since we've discovered that it's nice to have that time for just the three of us, lying in his bed). He always picks the books by himself, and we set one of them apart as the "reserve book," which is only read on the condition that he finishes his milk by the time we are done with the first two. After bath and before we read, he always double-checks assiduously that all three of his "friends" are in bed with him--a dog named Sharko, a blue moose called Bloose, and a teddy bear with a long history worthy of a separate blog entry called Misho--along with a little burp cloth that he keeps for wiping his nose when he is congested at night; he also takes one book in hand to read first, puts one on his left side to read second, and gives us the third as the reserve book. Tonight when we got to the point of assigning the books their order, his dad interrupted the process by trying to spray his nose with a saline spray to relieve some of his congestion, which Sava took as a sign that his book order was being messed with, and he became very agitated, "No, tati!...this is the reserve book! And we are going to read this first!" Apparently, the same thing had happened the night before, so Rado attempted to calm him down by saying, "Sava, relax...Remember we talked about that last night, too...?" Sava: "I don't wanna be relaxed!!"