As Mari could play through the night (if we allowed her 🙂 ) .

Nighttime. Mari is the complete night-owl. It didn’t matter what time we put her to bed. She never went to sleep right away.

We kind of had a nightly ritual that we followed with her. First we would sing the made up song her teacher in DeKalb taught us. It went like this: “Toys away. Toys away. It’s time to put our toys away.” We would repeat that several times until everything was cleaned up.

Then it was time to get her dressed into pj’s and brush her teeth. Once we were done with that, Keith and I would get her into bed and then start to sing her a song. One of her favorites was “five little monkeys jumpin’ on the bed.” We had hand motions we came up with for the song. As a matter of fact, the last night of her life in the house where we lived we sang that song. For me, nighttime always brings me sweet memories of our baby girl now in heaven.