The "sarcophagus"

Devon has really stepped up her nighttime filibuster campaigns. The signal for "time for bed" is that Walt and I launch into "Rock-a-bye Baby" followed by a humming version followed by a few seconds of "Ssshhh, ssshhh." Devon has managed to extend her bedtime for several minutes now by not drinking her milk right away (she has a bottle of milk, then some activity - like reading - before bed) and then waiting until after we're through with the whole singing thing. Then she'll start drinking the milk, and because we don't want to put her to bed with a bottle, we have to wait for her to finish (I haven't yet figured out how to integate teeth brushing into this routine; when we tried to introduce it, she wanted to brush herself and wouldn't let me do it, so absolutely nothing was accomplished. Although I supposed we certainly wouldn't be worse off than we are now, and she might get used to the idea of brushing teeth. We'll have to think about altering the routine). At any rate, she's managed to eke out a good extra 10 minutes with this milk drinking, so we're going to have to launch into song far earlier in order to get her into bed no later than 8pm.

She had also started this interesting addition to bedtime which I think is yet another filibuster manifestation. When she knows bedtime is near (e.g. we launch into song for instance), she'll start throwing stuff in her crib. Walt mentioned tonight that it was like "an Egyptian sarcophagus" -- I think he means tomb -- where the relatives of the deceased sent the deceased off into the underworld with all of the goods that he/she needed in life so he/she would have a comfortable life in the underworld. Devon is using her crib like this. She's usually awake after we put her to bed, and we'll often hear her playing or having conversations with herself in the crib. Now that she's realized this, she tries to pack the crib with toys before going to bed -- presumably so she'll have something to play with after we leave the room. She's been throwing all sorts of stuff in: blocks, books, stuffed animals, her pillow (which is really one of those donut travel pillows that my brother gave me), Zeebie the zebra -- you name it, it goes in the crib. We don't have the "soft toys only" rule at our house, so it's pretty much open season before bed. It's actually quite funny to see her throw items in over the top in a flurry; it reminds me a bit of a game show from ages ago where contestants got 1 minute in a grocery store to throw as much food into a shopping cart as possible. Devon has about 15 seconds to launch items into the crib before she goes in too.

I've got to diverge for a moment and comment on the growing crisis between Israel and Lebanon. I'm moderately liberal, but I'm actually not generally much of a supporter of the Palestinians when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. My time in Israel just made me feel that if the Palestinians governed Jerusalem, for instance, it would be a real disaster. But this Israeli bombardment of Hezbollah in Lebanon is really outrageous -- and what's got me even more enraged is our own government's total lack of interest in doing anything about this (in a region where the US is the de facto moderator, whether or not we want the role). If I didn't already despise Bush for his disastrous policy on Iraq (among many other gross missteps by this adminstration), his constant defense of Israel (driven, no doubt in part, by his fundamentalist beliefs of the necessity of Israel in order to spur the second coming of Christ) and patent desire to do nothing would have sent me further over the edge. I actually read a piece in the Times today noting that the adminstration has decided to wait a few more days before stepping in at all so that Israel could "soften" Hezbollah with more bombing. We seem utterly committed to a policy that will make all of the non-western world (and most of the western world) hate us. It makes me very sad.