Having a four year old has been fully as advertised, from the absurd things he says, DO YOU WANT TO EAT A COOKIE MADE OF PEOPLE? to his elaborate bedtime routine that I fully opt into, every night. It’s a complex world that we’ve built together and I fully just go with it, and oftentimes when I’m shutting his door after saying goodnight for the 4th time, I think, Did I really just make imaginary cowboys fart for like a good seven minutes?

I did.

His Bedtime routine started simply when we sleep trained him when he was I think five months, it was an elegant script of reading a few books, saying goodnight to things in the room, singing a song, and say Goodnight Joe, we love you, have a good sleep. It has evolved to this:

• Read 2-3 books that MUST contain cars, books that do not contain cars are futile.
• Get in bed (this part is simple.)
• Pull up covers, locate bunny and whale.
• This is when it gets weird.
• Say goodnight to the pictures of the cowboys on his wall, who always respond with loud farts because they ate too much chili, so you have to feed them some sort of food laced with sleeping medicine that will put them to sleep, like sleeping grape candy or sleeping Mango. Eventually, the cowboys go to sleep.
• Say goodnight to the clothes hanging on the clothes rack, who always respond with some cryptic comment about how you have bones and they don’t.
• Say good night to the books who beg you to read them and you tell them you’ll read them tomorrow and they keep begging and you keep promising tomorrow is new day.
• Say goodnight to the picture of baby Joe on the wall who always cries until you give HIM sleeping medicine, or mango.
• Say goodnight to the picture of the palm trees, mime an elaborate wind storm, pretend to get caught up in the wind storm, then extract yourself from the windstorm, dramatically rush back over to Joe’s bed, and make him PROMISE to not go near the palm trees, grab his shoulders and shake him a little bit and make him really PROMISE. This is his favorite part.
• Say goodnight to the neighbors, and the world, who each must respond, and they can’t respond with whatever they said the previous night.
• Decide on the correct place for the water bottle to be left for the night, maybe move it three to four times.
• Give him a huge for anywhere from 10 million to 100 million seconds. It’s permissible to count by millions or 10s of millions.
• Attempt to say goodnight, walk towards the door, knowing it’s just begun.
• Per his request, go back and give another 10 to 100 million hugs, and also kisses, which must go on the cheek or forehead.
• Joe says I love you and you say I love you too about 4 to 5 times.
• Repeat this whole sequence 3 to 4 times.
• Make it to the door.
• Go back for 100 million more hugs.
• Make it to the door again.
• Find yourself on the other side, and listen. Is it done?
• Exhale, then take a breath, and hold it until morning.