Josiah has managed to stretch the nighttime ritual to considerable length. Okay, I'm entirely to blame. He's just so cute and generally well behaved from evening prayers onwards! Our current permutation of the night-time ritual involves two songs that for some reason must be sung while his little, rather freaky, seahorse glows and plays it's competing music. The first we sing is "Jesus Loves the Little Children," which as I sing it has me wondering if it's still socially acceptable in the United States to sing about children who are "red and yellow, black and white." The second song we sing is "I love you, Lord, and I lift my voice…" Josiah sings with me most nights. The other night, as we sang he cried out, "STOP!" which, of course, rather took me by surprise and interrupted the song. He sang a few lines alone and then cried out "GO!" Fortunately, I'm a pretty bright guy so I figured out we were playing "Red Light, Green Light." These nights he still occasionally cries out "STOP!" and "GO!" while we sing. I'm okay with it. Especially as his wavering little voice rises above the evening noises of crickets and frogs, "Take joy, my King, in what you hear. Let it be a sweet, sweet sound in your ear."

-Shauen