Spaceship to Dreamland

Nick is in charge of bedtime in our household. This has always been the case, as I work afternoons (3pm to 11pm) three nights a week...so when I'm home, I'm only an addition to the well-oiled bedtime machine.

A couple of months ago, Nick came up with this genius way to get the boys excited to head upstairs to their rooms. He becomes a 'spaceship', sound effects and all, and tells the 'astronauts' ("Commander Xavier and Commander Ben") to get to their "stations" (separate couches) and prepare for blastoff.



Xavier, who claps when he hears Nick doing his spaceship sound, gets picked up first. He is then "locked in" (arms wrapped around Nick's neck),


and then Ben hops on.



Let the countdown begin! Ben shouts numbers backwards from 10 as the spaceship makes its way across our living room to the doorway to the kitchen and then b-l-a-s-t-o-f-f! The spaceship whooshes through the kitchen, then through the dining room, and into the foyer to make the journey up the stairs. At this point, Ben holds out Xavier's arm, for proper flight form as they zoom up into 'outerspace' - the landing at the top of the stairs, of course.




First stop: Mars (Xavier's room). Ben and Nick always say the same thing, at the same time, "Here we are on Mars, where it is cold and dark." Then astronaut Xavier disembarks from the spaceship and is lowered into his cozy bed.


Second stop: The moon. (Ben's room.) After much discussion of how dark it is outside, where the moon is in the sky, and if he can see the stars...finally Commander Ben is lowered down onto his floor (he prefers to fall asleep there).

And then peace settles over Planet Pandrea. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh....