Bedtime Update and Nostalgia

We are happy to share that Helen has finally adjusted to her big girl bed.  She, like her brother, must have a bedtime ritual, and while she does not demand three books, she does demand to be read to before bed.  To us, this is a pure joy and a positive thing to reinforce.  Philip reads voraciously and we like to think it was because we began reading to him at his nap and bedtime at an early age.

There are few, if any, toys left from my childhood in my parents house.  This is in stark contrast to Philip's childhood home that contains even the tiniest plastic G.I. Joe gun that mounts on the arm of some small action figure.  In fact, even the arms of G.I. Joe men themselves are still in his playroom, despite the actual bodies of the action figures having been severed from said arms decades ago.  We were recently at my parents home and Helen found a very old book I had as a little girl.  It is called What's In My Pockets?  I very much remember this book, and my parents hiding little trinkets inside the pockets sometimes when they read it to me.  The trinkets are long gone, and the book itself, being made of fabric and applique, has been washed many, many times, leaving it faded and well worn.  Simply put, it shows it was loved.

Helen asks me to read her the pocket book every time she lies down for a nap or her bedtime.  I leave the room with her babbling happily as she flips each page, sticking her sweet little fingers into each kind of pocket.  Her favorite is the secret pocket, sewn into the top corner of the last page of the book.

I can't tell you the joy it brings me to have one of my toys beloved by one of my children.  I'm off to find some little trinkets of our own to hide in each pocket, to start a new generation of memories with my own child now.