Here’s two stories that worked their charm on a not-very-sleepy little boy, turning him into a sleepy one.
Bep and the Giant Pumpkin: It is October, the official start of pumpkin season in our house. That means it is time to start talking about pumpkins and where we get them. So mommy, daddy, Elio and Emma got in Bep and went for a drive. They drove up up up to the top of Lausanne and then up up up to Mont sur Lausanne, then up up up more to the little self-service vegetable stand above it. Everyone went in and chose their pumpkins one by one. Emma got a little pumpkin because she needed to hold it between her feet in her maxi-cosi. Elio got a bigger pumpkin because he’s strong (Elio e forte!). Mami chose a good pumpkin for soup because she makes the best pumpkin soup. And daddy chose one to make a yummy pumpkin curry. Daddy was about to pay and go, but Elio asked, “What about Bep?” So they looked but none of the pumpkins were big enough for Bep. They went out back and found a perfect pumpkin, 1 meter across, 3.14 meters around and weighing 200 kg! They went to get Bep and asked, “can you carry it?” Bep said “beep beep vroom vroom, no problem” and drove the whole family home, each with their pumpkin on their lap (except mami, who was driving) and Bep with his pumpkin right in the middle.
The Little Red Robot: Once upon a time, there was a little red robot. (Elio was wearing his red robot pj’s.) This little red robot could do everything the master programmer taught him. He could dress himself, go poo poo, feed himself, read books, etc etc. He even knew how to initiate the food processing unit decontamination procedure (teeth brushing) and the light delumination protocol (turning off the bathroom light by head butting it). But each night, when the little red robot went into sleep mode, something magical happened. He got to do things he never did in the day. He ran programs for flying on clouds, climbing in trees, (around this point Elio interrupted and asked that the story should include a “motoschlitta”: snowmobile), and ride lunar snowmobiles across the moon through craters and over the horizon, far from the robot base. That night, the little red robot ran the snow mobile program in his processing unit all night. In the morning when he woke up, he went to Central Dispatch and found that his job that day was to go drive lunar snowmobiles for real! And so he did.
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