The Bi-Monthly Bath

Talking to most parents, you'll most likely hear about the 'evening ritual' at one time or another. The ritual begins with dinner, then bath time, then pajama time, then bedtime story time, then laying your child down to rest for the night. No such ritual exists in our home. Our ritual looks more like this: follow Rai around, stuffing spoon-fulls of food into his mouth when he'll take them and then, at 6pm sharp, Rai we'll say "night night", Rai will repeat "night night", lay his head on Dad's shoulder, and will go straight to bed without incident, complaint, or struggle. Our ritual takes but a few minutes compared to the hour or longer the typical ritual can take.
For many parents, the ritual is their only time with their child following a long day at work. For us, we get several hours with Rai in the morning when we do a lot of reading and lots of hours together after school as we get home early. Quality time is not an issue here. Still, once in a while, we do give our Rai a bath (two or three times a month only as Grandpa has claimed this task as his own) and, when we do, it's always a great time!