Every now and then, Robbie has one of those special bedtimes.  The one where he looks at me, grins, and exclaims, “I love you, Mom!” while touching my face.  The ones where he wants to have special talks about everything he wants to do.  Tonight was one of those.  Our conversation went a little like this:

“Mom, need to go fishing tomorrow.  ‘K?  I share with Pete.  First my turn.  Then his turn.  Then Mommy’s turn.  Then Daddy’s turn.”  I actually have no idea what this means, but I tell him how proud of him I am when he shares.  This seems to be an acceptable response.

“Want to ride a shark tomorrow.  OK, Mom?”  I’m pretty sure I do a double-take at this one and tell him that might be dangerous and, other than the great whites out at the Cape, I’m not sure where to find any sharks.

“Well, want to ride an alligator.  PLEASE, Mom?  Pleeeeaaaase, can I?”  Again, I tell him this might be dangerous, which gets us onto a new tangent.

“Dangerous to run away.  QiQi run away.  Get in big trouble.  Mommy ever run away?  Daddy ever run away?”  He doesn’t actually want to pack his bags and run away; I figure we still have a few year before that.  He just gets in trouble when he runs down the street after I ask him to stop.

“Want to ride a zebra.”  I tell him this could maybe happen; after all, it did in Swiss Family Robinson.  Although I hope we’re never stranded on an island that pirates frequent…  Before I can even finish my sentence, he’s moved on.

“And an elephant.  Need to ride an elephant, Mom.”  Here, I finally have something to add.  I actually have ridden an elephant.  He’s pretty impressed.  It’s kind of a big thing if your mom has ridden something like an elephant.

“Daddy ride an elephant?”  When I say we’ll have to ask, Robbie takes this in for a minute before asking, “QiQi need to ask?”  I told him I would check.  And, no, Justin hasn’t ridden an elephant.

“Need to go on a picnic tomorrow, Mom.  At the small beach.  And get ice cream from ice cream truck.  Gotta catch the ice cream truck. But first go play playground.  No, first wake up.  Then get dressed.  Then have picnic lunch and get ice cream and play playground.”  Sounds like a pretty good plan to me, although I still don’t know how he learned about the ice cream truck…  Neither justin or myself has ever taken him to get ice cream that way.

Shortly after, he asked me to sing, “Edelweiss”, rolled over, and went to sleep.  And I hurried down to write before I forgot any of it.