Mostly I don’t like it when things don’t go according to plan. I mean, I don’t make that many plans to begin with, so the ones I make, I’d like to have work. You know?

Tonight Sadie was tired out, and asked to go to bed early. We were just getting dinner on the table. “Put me in bed?” she says. “You put me in my bed?”

Obviously I couldn’t refuse that even if I wanted to, and I figured what with the being up late and the being a little bit sick, she could probably use the extra shut-eye. So I put her in bed.

And here’s where the not-going-according-to-plan part starts, because while she fell right to sleep, she was wide awake and rested an hour later. “Oh no,” says we. “Still nigh-night time!”

But no, she couldn’t fall back to sleep, so we let her get up again. The other kids had all gone to sleep, leaving just mama and daddy and miss two-year-old to hang out.

She proceeded to spend the next hour and a half being the most charming, cheery little person ever to be seen in the middle of the night (okay, 9:00 may not be the middle of the night, but still). She snuggled. She sang. She did hand motions for the songs. She climbed on my lap, she climbed on Dane’s lap, she smiled and chattered at us until we wondered why we ever encourage her to go to bed at all, she’s so entertaining.

And then she asked to be put in bed again, and she fell back to sleep with just enough time left in the night for me to blog.

So, okay, I don’t always mind when my plans go awry. Sometimes it’s nice to be reminded that toddlers are delightful little creatures. (Of course, if she’d been awake and cranky after bedtime, this would be a much whinier post, but that’s not how it turned out tonight.) Tonight it was nice to be reminded that my plans are just… plans. They’re good, they’re fine, but sometimes stepping outside the plan lends itself best to joy. And that, I think, is what I’d like to be able to plan for all along.