Simple ways to make tonight special

I'm such a believer in making ordinary days and nights special for our children. It's so easy to get caught up in a routine and have them all blend together and slip away. When my kids look back on their childhood, I want them to remember a mosaic of little moments filled with wonder, oddness, beauty, magic...life.

That's why I make up so many of these lists and ones in similar themes, and why I put up this site. So here, in the spirit of that, is one more entry, this one focusing on nights.

Why don't you.....


• After supper, roast marshmallows by candlelight.
  
  
• Do you and your daughter's hair up in rag curls while watching a girly show and sleep in them (just tie rags into strips, roll hair like curlers and tie). In the morning you'll both resemble Shirley Temple!
  
  
• Serve bite-sized things for supper and eat it entirely with toothpicks or those tiny swords from cocktail glasses.
  
  
• Play truth or dare with your kids.
  
  
• Go outside and teach your toddler (or older!) to howl at the moon.
  
  
• Bring a blanket outside and look at the stars. Teach your kids the constellations or the big dipper, or just lie there and marvel at how amazing they are.
  
  
• Go for a moonlight walk. There's a mood to neighborhoods at night that is so different it will be like walking with them for the first time on your own streets. I used to walk with a friend and my baby daughter Victoria late at night. Victoria would sleep in her stroller as easily as anywhere else if she wanted, and if not there was a whole new world to watch in the quiet dark.
  
  
• Start a bedtime Q&A tradition. When you tuck in your child, designate some time to ask questions about the day or about life in general. You could make it structured, every night asking what was something they learned, what was something good that happened and something bad.... and then you should answer too. Or you can ask different questions of each other every night- everything from what sort of tree do you think you'd be to who do you most admire.
  
  
• Serve some chocolate milk or juice in fancy goblets and sit and talk for a few minutes at the table as you sip from them.
  
  
• Sneak in now and whisper that you love them. They'll hear you every time.

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All works on this site Alicia Bayer unless otherwise noted.
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