Since the Monkey was about 2 years old, I have been saying bed time prayers with him and the Puppy on the nights that I put them to bed. It started as a place to have that conversation about who is God and who is God to us. The boys don’t really ask that many questions about it, but they sort of listened along. Generally, I said the prayer for the Monkey and it was often one of the standard children’s prayers that go like “Now I lay me down to sleep” (although it IS a bit morbid for a child’s prayer). Luckily, the Monkey never actually asked me why we were praying about dying before he woke up.

Anyway, in the past year, they have developed quite a gusto for praying at bedtime. They look forward to it and if I try to skip it to hurry downstairs, they often call me back to do it. Our conversations with God go like this:

Me: Dear God….

Monkey: Dear God. Thank you for Spiderman.

Puppy: Dear God. Thank you for my Princess!

Monkey: Thank you for my Transformers, my stickers on the wall, my bicycle, my storm trooper.

Puppy: Thanks for CAKE!! I LOVE CAKE!!

Monkey: Thank you for the Spiderman game, the Girl Game, Castle Crashers.

Puppy: Thank you for the stickers on the door.

Monkey: HEY! Those are MY stickers! Not your stickers!

Puppy: MY STICKERS!!!!

Monkey: NO!!! MY STICKERS!!!

Me: Okay. That’s enough! We’ve thanked God enough! Good night!