Our Bedtime Puppet Shows Might Not Win Any Awards, But I Blame the Pandemic
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It certainly seems like I write an inordinate amount about sleep, bedtime routines, and related minutiae, but as they say, “write what you know!”
My 6-year-old’s bedtime routine has evolved yet again in recent months. We don’t use our trusty rocking chair anymore, even though it’s still there, keeping watch over the bed, in case we need it.
Instead, we lie down side by side in the red race car bed and on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, but also some other days when the mood dictates, my son and I each choose from the selection of eight to fifteen stuffed animals that live in his bed and use them to act out a short scene.
The plot of these scenes changes slightly from night to night, but one thing remains constant. They are objectively terrible.
I’m talking kindergarten Christmas play bad, which makes sense for my son, I suppose, but it doesn’t really excuse my miserably weak performances.
I don’t know what it is exactly, but I just can’t seem to put my heart into the role of Candy Cane the Dog learning how to bark or Tigger learning how to bounce or Detective Pikachu learning how to use his electric power.
I should be better than this; I certainly have many years of experience doing mundane things. Perhaps it’s because by 9:30 at night I’m just exhausted and tired of interacting. And by the time we crawl into bed, I’ve survived at least an hour or two of heavily regimented doll play with my 4-year-old daughter. Not to mention this activity the boys made up based on a Roblox game where I have to walk around and pretend to be a sinister clown who speaks only in rhymes while they try to escape the house or something.
The details are fuzzy.
However, I think It’s more likely that my malaise is attributable to the pandemic pall that has hovered over me for months now. You might know the one. That dark cloud that just hangs there, blocking out the light.
Some rays of sunshine sneak by from time to time, and when things go reasonably well for as much as a few days in a row, I almost forget that the cloud is there. Almost. It always comes back, though. It’s as reliable as a Florida thunderstorm on a July afternoon.
I’m struggling to do many things well right now, but when I attempt to play with my kids (as is required…by them), my struggles are most obvious. My daughter and I play dolls every day, but I’ve been mailing in my performances more and more. Luckily, she never stops talking, so the action floats along fairly smoothly without me.
And now, my nighttime puppet show performance is also weak. Of course, all this isn’t really about the talking stuffed animals and games. There’s obviously a lot more going on.
Three months of malaise and stasis feels long. The prospect of another year of anxiety and uncertainty with some difficult decisions along the way (SCHOOL?!?!) seems completely untenable.
I suppose there’s only one thing to do.
I will just have to add our Eeyore stuffy into the mix at bedtime, because in many ways, Eeyore is the role I’ve been playing most of my life. I can pull that one off flawlessly no matter what’s going on in the world. In fact, if anyone was made to handle 2020, Eeyore is definitely the one.
We just might win some puppet show prizes yet!
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