A change in routine

For many months Isaac and I have had a fixed going-to-bed routine, both for naps and at night. In the evenings Craig gets it started with pyjamas and stories, but the final part of the routine is always mine:

• look out the window, wave, say "Bye-bye yard, we'll see you after the nap," and pull down the blinds
• stop by the fish mobile, wave, and say, "Bye-bye fish, we'll see you after the nap"
• move to the crib and say, "Now we're going to set you down in your cozy crib and zip you into your cozy sleep sack, and we'll sing"
• sing "Skip to My Lou" as peacefully as I can while I wrestle him into the sleep sack
  
• sit down in the armchair and nurse
  
• look at celebrity gossip sites on the laptop
  
• set him down in the crib after he is soundly asleep
  

I am a happy creature of habit and I almost never deviate from this. However, four days ago Craig went out of town. As I was already improvising on his part of the evening routine, I mixed it up further by throwing in an extra stop after the fish: a framed photo of Craig holding a six-day-old Isaac. I said, "Bye-bye Dad, we'll see you after -- well, not after the nap, but we'll see you after." Isaac grinned and reached out eagerly for the photo, so I considered it a success, if perhaps overstimulating. (Isn't a bedtime routine supposed to be a little boring, the better to be soporific?)

And the very next time Isaac was heading to bed, he remembered the change. When we got to the fish, instead of looking at it he whipped his head around and looked for the photo of his dad.

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Furthermore, this has sparked an interest in the photo, which for many months has been sitting uneventfully on a bookcase near his crib. Yesterday he was staring up at it and saying, "Da! Da!" I consider this his second fake word. His first fake word was "na-nuh," said with much prompting in the presence of a banana.