Paci Passing

On many nights, our nighttime ritual goes like this:  Luke climbs into our big jacuzzi bath and plays for a little while.  Then I hop in, clean Luke up, wash his hair, and pass him on to Jeff.  Jeff gets Luke ready for bed, brushes his teeth, gives him his vitamin (if I forgot to do it earlier), finds his pacifier, gets ready for bed himself, and then reads to Luke or watches a little television with him while I have a moment (and it's often the only moment I have all day) to myself.  Jeff even locks the door to the bathroom on the way out, so I can have about 5-10 minutes of uninterrupted Calgon time.  What a great dad!

Well, as you can imagine, Luke does not go gently into the good night.  Within a few minutes he's usually clawing at the bathroom door, yelling for me  (I'm very glad he hasn't learned to say "Hurry up!"--I know that's coming soon.  Sigh.).  And while I'm usually 95% available for Luke the rest of the time, I know he's in good hands with Jeff.  So I repeatedly yell from the other side of the door ideas for Luke  ("Go read a book with Daddy!" or "Go play with Daddy!" or "Mommy is in time out!"), because I sometimes really just need a minute to myself. 

Except last night I think Luke got closer to cracking the code.  And I just happened to have my iPod handy, so I snapped the pics that will follow in a minute.

I was brushing my teeth, and I looked back to see Luke passing his paci (what he calls his pacifier--actually, he calls it a "pat-ty") underneath the bathroom door.  Hilarious!  And ingenious!  He knew it would get my attention, and for a minute it did.  Then I remembered that I actually had Jeff to cover for me, and I went back to my five minutes of alone time. 

Toddlers are so good at manipulation.  I didn't give in, though, and instead I just took pictures.  Okay, confession:  I did move the paci a little closer to Luke's reach so I could get a better picture.  :)