Naps

Now I know my kids are not secretly sleep hating masterminds determined to destroy each other’s naps, but the results of their efforts might lead someone to give them more credit than they are due.

My little girl being less than a year old needs multiple naps a day.  This gives her brother plenty of opportunity to notice a quiet moment and fill the silence with his ill-timed noisy antics.  And it seems that though he could be noisy at any time of day he prefers to up the volume of his play when I’m trying to let the baby take a nap.

Now my son, being 3 years old, only takes one nap a day.   It feels important, and it feels like a gift when I can get my daughter to nap while my son takes his only nap of the day.  But my son is not the only one who fails to show any respect for the naps of others.  My little girl can go from drinking milk to screaming in the time it takes to take a breath.  This can, as one might expect, wake my son. 

Now my son does not take well to having his nap time interrupted.  If artificially woken from a nap my son more likely than not will cry, and not just a little.  He can spend approximately half an hour after being woken up from a nap, being absolutely inconsolable.

All these naps missed or mucked up can be hard on a caregiver. It’s just a lot easier to decompress and take a moment for one’s self when the children are sleeping.  Me time is important for mental health, but it feels selfish beyond reason to take that time when the kids are awake.   Even when my husband is home and playing with the kids, I still feel a little guilty for asking him to take over kid watching while I do things like take a shower or a nap or anything else I might want to do but can’t with children awake and underfoot.  Silly as it may be to admit it, the idea of delegating my kid watching responsibilities, even for a short period of time, makes me feel guilty.

This lack of both kids napping at the same time is sadly the main reason for the sporadic and random updates from me.

But let’s face it.  When the kids are awake they need me to play with them, read them stories, feed them…. You get the idea; right now all the mom things that make up daily life take precedence over blogging.

Trick or Treat?

I was a little nervous about taking my kids to trick or treat this year.  And not because I suspect my neighbors of wanting to give out “bad candy” or anything like that.

 No my concern was my 3 year-old son, who has gotten progressively worse at following directions would be a little monster or that my baby girl would get scared of the spooky decorations.  But to my amazement, once he understood what the game was, he became a well behaved trick or treater!  He was able to say “trick or treat” and “thank you” at each house.   And when he was able to tell what other kids were dressed up as he would say things like “Hi ghost!” or “Hello Spooky Witch!”

Talk about adorable!

And my little girl was mostly chill.  Well, she did cry when anyone in costume tried to talk to her… but other than that she was good with being in the stroller for a good chunk of our walk and then she was good being held for the rest of the mini adventure.

There was one overwhelming point when a large herd of children all converged on the same house that my son was climbing the stairs of.  He made it to the top landing just as the mass of elementary school kids knocked on the door and shoved passed him for candy.  But my son didn’t seem to put off by being jostled by older children and once they had cleared out the lady giving out candy gave him one of her glow bracelets which really made my son’s night.  “It’s beautiful” he said over and over.  It’s kind of amazing what a big impression a little light can make on a small child.

After a while my son was more interested in checking out what was in his bag than adding to it, so we let him have a lollipop and made our way back home,  albeit trick or treating along the way, but we made it with minimal fuss.

All and all I feel fairly good about the idea of doing this again next year.