Another Chapter...

...you know that parenting book Mike and I have been working on?
Well, I think I may have completed the chapter on bedtime.

Here's the story:
Wednesday nights I fly completely solo. Mike, Adam and Audrey are all at mutual (let's face it--it's not like Grant wants anybody but me to put him to bed and he's the tough one, so it's more a night of some what calm and quiet without the big, loud people around). Usually I run a pretty tight ship. Tonight I got Grant to bed quite smoothly, so smoothly in fact that I decided to be the nice mom and let the girls stay up and watch a little TV--with the understanding that when it was time for bed it was TIME FOR BED, no milking it.
After watching a little boob tube together I sent them on their way and they went right into bed. Nicely done, farmgirl mothering, nicely done.
Until 2 minutes later when Elsie was hungry, and 2 minutes after that when she was thirsty, and 2 minutes after that when she needed to tell me one last thing, and 2 minutes after that when her sister ratted her out before she even got to the door of the bedroom--you get the picture. In the midst of all of this 'night time negotiating' Mike came home, we were sitting on the bed visiting when in comes the little lady herself...she needed to tell me that her tooth (that is barely loose) was really hurting her.
I told her with all the sincerity and love a mother can that I was terribly sorry to hear about her sore tooth and that I could think of two options that we could do about it--she would get to choose which one she preferred.
1)She could go back to bed, lay down, go to sleep and forget about it.
or
2)I would have her father rip the tooth right out of her head on the count of three.
One...
Two....
and that's the last we saw of our darling Elsie for the evening.

Too much???