For Grammy

The bedtime routine for N usually involves a bottle of milk, given to him in his room with the lights out, with the hope that it will help him settle down to sleep.  Lately he's been having a fairly large amount of milk as part of a fairly late dinner, so last night and tonight I put him to bed without the milk, just some snuggles with Mommy in the rocker before being laid in the crib.

It would appear that this is not a good idea.  Last night (this morning?) he woke up at 4:15 am and wouldn't settle down from the banshee screaming until provided a cold beverage.  Tonight he woke up just an hour after being put down, with all the indicators pointing to a similar outcome, so I took a bottle into his room to try and get him settled.  Now, I don't turn on any lights when I go in his room at night...I prefer that he not wake up that much, and I rarely actually NEED more light than what comes in from under the door and behind the curtain.  So it was quite perplexing to me tonight, when I settled him in my lap with his bottle, to see several parallel strips of light showing on my chest.  I was looking all around, trying to figure out where this beam of light was coming from, was it a reflection on the bottle, what on earth is going on here?!?!??  Finally I moved a finger off the bottle into the area of the light to try and get a direction on it, and discovered the source.  My son, lover of all things spherical, had spirited a spirit into his crib with him at bedtime.  There, clutched tightly in the fingers of the hand resting on my chest, was a glow-in-the-dark ping-pong ball, still going strong an hour after the light was turned off.

So thank you, Grammy, for providing the toy that both freaked me out and gave me a good laugh, all at the same time.  I owe you one.