For the third night in a row, Jessica is out free-lancing on another professional mosaic project.   This one is for a new Whole Foods being built in Fair Lakes (Fairfax, VA). While I understand that it’s not going to be as interesting as the one she worked on for the outside of the Whole Foods in Alexandria, it’s still cool that she’s working on so many public mosaics (and getting paid well to do so).

For the record, I’ve heard folks in the past say stuff like, “I’ve done mosaics, I know all about them” or “so-and-so did a little workshop/class on mosaics” and they don’t hold a candle to Jessica. I’ve seen a lot of crap products out there (almost anything that you can buy in a store for less than $100) and custom mosaics are completely different. In my never humble opinion about her, my wife has a real talent for this, backed up by serious professional skill.

Anyway, as you can imagine, there’s a very real weather-related deadline to getting this current mosaic done. They want to have it installed before the constant freezing temperatures arrive. Because of that, I told Jessica that I’d watch Tommy as much as necessary.

Today when I got home, she told me that the boy had no afternoon nap at all so I should expect him to be a little Crabby McCrabbster. I set about feeding him his dinner, and we went straight for the “jammins”. Once he was prepared for bed, I let him play for a little while (and kept pulling him away from the A/V receiver under the television) and just generally hang out. About half an hour prior to his normal bedtime routine, we broke out the Goodnight Moon. I swear he knows as soon as that book is opened that he’s headed down the bedtime path. There was more fussing and squirming, but we got through it.

I took him upstairs and started swaying him back and forth (I don’t fit in our current glider) and sang him a lullaby: LittleGreenLane-Kevin.mp3

It’s the same lullaby I always sing him, and it’s uniquely “Daddy”. Jessica sings him different songs. I’ve hummed that lullaby to various children to put them to sleep: Brandon, Regan, Andrew… I’m sure there are others. Now you know the secret. Tommy gets the actual words.

After three rounds of it, I incribulated him and said good night. Of course, he started crying immediately, but he only got out two outbursts before I didn’t hear anything else from him. I’d say he was one tired little guy.

Good night, Tommy. I love you.