Ironically, given the nightly difficulties she encounters in actually falling asleep, one of Julia's favorite play-acting scenarios is to put things to bed. Usually, she's putting "friends" to bed, which entails covering up Bert & Ernie, various teddy bears, or other toys with blankets, kleenex, sheets of paper, burp cloths - whatever's handy. Often, she puts herself to bed by burrowing under her actual quilt, the duvet on "mamadaddy's bed," a stack of pillows, or, hilariously, one of Genevieve's play mats.
Every now and then, the "putting to bed" game goes Dada. Tonight, for instance, as dinner wound done, Julia put her fork to bed. She carefully placed it in the middle of a napkin, folded the edges of the napkin around the fork so you could only see the tips of the tines, and laid the fork mummy down very softly on her placemat, saying, in exactly the tone I use when saying my goodnights to her, "Okay, fork, it's sweeping time now. Go to bed like a big fork, wif no calling for daddy fork! Ni-ni, fork!"