“Daddy, I have something to tell you,” my little girl said to me last night as she stood up from cuddling next to me while we had read Curious George and the Firefighters.

“What do you have to tell me?”

“I am very, very, very sorry for behaving so badly, Daddy.”

“Well, thank you, Sweetie Girl, but why did you behave so badly?”

“I…I…I…I didn’t want to do it,” she struggled to explain as she danced from one foot to the other in front of me. She didn’t want to go to the bathroom before bed. She didn’t want to change into her pajamas. She didn’t want to brush her teeth.

“But Sweetie Girl,” I said to her as I lifted her up and put her on my lap, something that isn’t quite as easy to do as it used to be. “Those are thing we all have to do before we go to sleep at night. I’m sorry you don’t like them but you need to do them. They are important.”

“I know.”

“You can just tell us you don’t like them, though you’ll still need to do them.”

“Okay,” she said in a little voice.

“I love ending our nights like this, cuddling, talking, hugging and kissing each other.”

“Me too,” my Okapis chimed in.

“But ending with screaming, crying, tantrums and time outs is no fun. Let’s try not to end our nights like that, okay?”

“Okay Daddy.”

“Should we read our other Curious George book?”

“Yeah!”