Pre-sleep, pt. 2

Having run laps through the house the previous half-hour – and much of the day – Samuel sleeps. Karin snaps this photo:


He is running laps again this morning; and on his own initiative, he has graduated from the aforementioned biography of Agatha Christie to my prized coffee table book, Agatha Christie: The Art of Her Crimes: The Paintings of Tom Adams. (Adams and the mystery writer Julian Symons comment on Christie in the book; samples of Adams’s cover art are on this Pinterest page.) I have misgivings. The boy handles books rather well, but every month he does tear a couple of pages out of this or that volume. And he always has peanut butter on his hands.

I’ve given up calling him when it’s his nap-time. I simply take a book to another room, put on music, and wait for him to wander over.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The boy: “Some pizza?”

John-Paul: “We don’t have any pizza.”

The boy: [Cries.]

After this exchange is repeated several times, he comes around to thinking it’s a big joke. He laughs every time I say, “We don’t have any pizza.” Then, more realistically, he says:

“Some beans?”

“Some eggs?”

I am happy to oblige.