Telling stories with my mouth

I remember my dad telling me stories growing up. "Once upon a time...in a country far, far away..." It was awesome. We would be hooked. Totally enthralled. Honestly, I would really like to hear another one of those as an adult. I'm not sure it would hold the same weight...but nonetheless, my dad rocked the bedtime story.

My first memory of "telling stories with my mouth," was with my friend Veronica's little girl Kyla. I didn't have children yet, and I spent a lot of time at Veronica's house in the evenings and a few times, helped her put Kyla (3) and Dylan (infant) to bed. One night I told Kyla a story to get her to sleep. It became notoriously, a "story from my mouth."

A few months after Andrew was born, I started a series of little stories about Allie, and her little brother AJ. Allison got to pick the subject, and then I told mini stories about the sibling adventures. Her favorite subjects were objects in a room. Nearly every night she picked fan. I'm sure that's because as we lay in bed we had full visual of the ceiling fan. Can I tell you how hard it is to come up with creative sibling stories about fans?? Not easy. The stories faded after a few months, but recently made a dramatic comeback.

Allison will do anything to get out of going to bed. Lately, her tactic is reading books. Only by that, she means that she gets to sit in bed and read a book to herself...about 50 million times. As a way to get her to bed quicker, I brought back the story a few nights ago and we have had a great time. Only, I've turned it into kind of a mad libs deal. I start the sentence, and she finishes it. Tonight, she asked to start her own story. It started out the same way..."One day, Allie and her little brother AJ were playing." To be honest, as I sit, here, I cannot, for the life of me remember exactly how it started. But I can tell you that midway through, AJ did something to Allie which required their mom to put him in timeout. It then morphed to them going to the zoo, where Allie got her finger bitten off by a polar bear when she was feeding it. That ended them up in the doctor's office where she got 4 shots and cried (because those things hurt mommy), and AJ got some shots and cried too, but they both got stickers.

Umm...I love her creativity, but that was a little interesting. There will be many more telling of stories from both of our mouths, and I love every minute of it.

And contrary to popular belief, I do not spend all my time talking blood and guts with my kids. That's all her.