My daughter is a radio

This morning, and by that I mean, in the middle of the night (4:00 AM), she came in our room, tapped me and said, "can you read this book?" She was holding Shel Silverstein's, "Where the Sidewalk Ends." Half awake, I said, "Peach, it's the middle of the night. It's time for sleep."

She sighed, and said, "oh. I'm out of chapstick and I want to change into my leotard."

Too tired to argue, I said, "fine." If you knew my daughter, you'd know trying to negotiate a wardrobe change at any time, let alone in the middle of the night, is futile at best.

She walked out of the room and I went back to sleep for two minutes, until she returned.

"My purple leotard is in the laundry so I changed into this." I opened my eyes to see her twirling around in her Sleeping Beauty princess dress in the dark. Sleeping Beauty. How ironic.

"Sweetheart," I gently coached, "it's really not time for playing. It's time for sleeping. I don't want you to be too tired for gymnastics in the morning."

"I won't be. But I think I'll wear my pink leotard to gymnastics since it's warmer so I don't get cold at gymnastics..."

She continued to tell me the color of all of the girls' leotards in class, and then reminded me that she has a friend in school who's in the 9:00 am class instead of the 8:00 am she's in. She asked if she could take ice skating lessons when gymnastics was over and told me she wants braids in her hair for school on Monday and that her friend Mark can't have braids because he has short hair AND he's a boy, and wouldn't that be funny if Mark had braids in his hair? And when she's older, will she be allowed to drive my car? Would Grandma let her drive her car? Maybe she should have a car of her own. She wants a pink one with lots of windows.

I think I drifted off at some point, not that she noticed. She's like a radio. Now if I could just find the off switch occasionally, I might get some more sleep.