Glowing Stars

Peanut has had a packet of glow-in-the-dark stars in her drawer for a long time. Possibly since last Christmas. Today, as a means of negotiating some nap time cooperation, I put a few up as a reward for her getting into bed without a fuss. Then came the fuss. Because, of course, at 2pm, the glow-in-the-dark stars don’t glow.

First she demanded that I turn off the light. Then, when I showed her the light was already off, she demanded that I turn it “really off,” as in, turn off the sun, so she could see her stars glow. It’s a tough concept to explain to a two-year-old, this whole notion of things that glow all day, but can only be seen glowing at night, but I think she got it. But then at bedtime, when I wanted to leave her light on for a few minutes to charge up the stars, she demanded that I keep it off so she could see them glow, and we got to have the conversation all over again.

And then there’s the whole fact that it’s summer and it stays light so late that it wasn’t really dark when she went to bed, so she could just faintly make out a hint of glowing in the darkening room. But a couple of wonderful things about this girl, she’s got a terrific imagination and, for the most part, a great positive outlook on life, so she just looked around at the barely glowing stars and started giving them names. This one’s the mommy star, this one’s the baby star, that one’s the sister star... I snuck out and left her and her new stars to the business of getting to know each other.