Nap with Me

Naptime with my son is often a struggle. Naturally, he would much rather keep playing with his toys than lie down in his bed and be quiet. When my husband manages naptime, he has a remarkable ability to give my son The Look and immediately son lies down and falls asleep. Alas, I have yet to master The Look, so my approach is a combination of cajoling, scolding, bribery, and resignation.

An average naptime goes something like this:

Me: Ryan, lie down and go to sleep.
Ryan: [lies down; immediately jumps up again]
Me: Ryan, lie DOWN and go to SLEEP!
Ryan: Mama, I need my toy.
Me: No, you don’t. Lie down and go to sleep.
Ryan: Yes, I do! YES I DOOOOOOOOO!
Me: Nope. It’s naptime now, not toy time. Lie down and go to SLEEEEEEEP!!!
Ryan: [squirms and tries to get up]
Me: You may have the toy after naptime, so the sooner you go to sleep, the sooner you can play.
Ryan: I want to play NOW! [gets up yet again]
Me: [grabs him bodily and wraps my legs around him so he can’t wriggle]
Ryan: Mama, LET GOOOOOO!
Me: If you can lie still and not say a word for 30 seconds, I will let go.
Ryan: [wriggles and yells after about a second and a half]
Me: [continuing body wrap and adding head lock]
Ryan: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

This may continue for several hours, until one or both of us falls asleep.

Yup, it is very common that I actually fall asleep during his naptime. Hey, I’m exhausted, I’m lying in a bed, I’m listening to quiet music, I’m thinking sleepy thoughts – sometimes the subconscious just takes over. (Before anyone worries, my subconscious is very aware that I have another child and will never let me fall asleep unless she is either also napping or being watched by my husband at the time.)

And it’s actually really nice to join my little guy for a nap. He is so high-energy when he’s awake that he rarely wants to snuggle for more than a second or two at a time, so it’s a rare treat when I can hold him in my arms and run my fingers through his beautiful hair and feel his warm, chubby legs and his still-soft little boy skin. And I love the way he relaxes in my arms when he finally decides to give up the nap battle. He knows he’s safe in my arms, and I love hearing his breathing relax into the deep exhausted sleep that only small children can throw themselves into so completely when they feel safe and secure.

And when I know that he’s safe and secure and relaxed, how can I help but feel the same way? There’s nothing so satisfying as relaxing into dreamland knowing your children are safe and relaxed as well. Why would I ever want to resist that?

There Is No Try

According to Yoda’s philosophy, I just spent several hours doing nothing. You remember that scene from one of the Star Wars movies when Luke was practicing using The Force and he whined to Yoda that he was trying, and Yoda responded with the immortal words, “Do or do not. There is no try.”? Well, I’m having one of those days when the starfighter is staying resolutely mired in the swamp. I was trying and trying, but there was no do.

The morning started off with such promise: Ryan woke up happy as a clam, ate his breakfast without too much flinging of food, he even played contentedly in his playpen while I took a shower. So when I packed him into the car, I had lovely visions of sipping my Dunkin Donuts iced coffee while pushing him down the sunny street in his stroller as we waited for the service station to change my oil and issue my new inspection sticker. Unfortunately, when I got to the service station it was so crowded that there wasn’t even a spot for me to park so I could go in and ask how long the wait would be.

Eh, minor setback. I also needed to go shopping for a gift for my sister (actually, “gifts” – not only is her birthday this weekend but she’s also getting married next month so there are shower and wedding presents on the list as well), so I figured I’d just head over to the mall. Ryan was getting sleepy in the backseat, so I was hoping that he’d hold out till I could get him strapped into the stroller and then he could snooze away while I shopped. Naturally, by the time I found a parking spot he was out cold. He only woke up a bit when I moved him from the car seat to the stroller, so I thought I was golden. Until he woke up 15 minutes later. Oh well, he likes riding the stroller around the mall, so that wasn’t too much of a problem. So I went to several different stores and couldn’t find a THING that I was looking for. Seriously, how can I be in a mall with literally hundreds of stores, looking for multiple (not particularly unusual) things, and not find a single thing that I’m looking for? It was absolutely crazy.

So after spending several hours checking out every store that I thought might possibly have what I needed, I gave up and headed home. Ryan started getting squawky as we neared the car, so I made up a bottle for him for the ride home. He managed to finish almost all of it before he threw it over the edge of his car seat. And since we were still 15 or 20 minutes from home, I hoped he’d fall back to sleep on the way. Ha! No such luck. He seemed to get his second wind and by the time we turned off the highway he was starting to squawk again, this time because he didn’t want to be strapped in any more. He was so squawky, in fact, that when I couldn’t find the bottle he’d flung away, I didn’t even stop to hunt for it, I just freed him from the prison that is his car seat (in his opinion, anyway) and brought him inside.

As soon as I’d changed his diaper, I put him in his crib, hoping against hope that he’d give in and finish his nap. He spent a few minutes yelling and an hour playing before he finally went to sleep, but at least he finally did.

I guess getting him to finish his nap counts as getting something done today. Too bad that’s the only thing I can count as getting done! I’m thinking that, given the day’s track record, I’d be wise to not try to do anything else today except take a nap myself. Yeah, I’m pretty certain that’s the best idea I’ve had all day.

If You Don't Like the Schedule, Wait a Minute

I think it was Mark Twain who first said about New England, “If you don’t like the weather, wait a minute.” I am discovering that New England weather is not the only thing about which this is true. Babies' nap schedules fall smack dab in the middle of that category.

Just when Ryan had fallen into a neat (and predictable) pattern of napping from 10am until 11:30am or noon and again from 2:30 or 3pm until 4pm, he started working his way into a one-nap-a-day schedule. His morning nap lengthened itself to two hours or more and if he managed an afternoon nap at all, it was a 45-minute or hour-long catnap around dinnertime. And once I started getting used to that schedule, he started getting all over the map in terms of morning nap length – everything from a 45-minute power nap to three hours at a stretch! Sometimes he’d be ready to go down at 9:30am, sometimes not till 1 or 2 in the afternoon. Eventually he got into a semi-predictable pattern of one nap a day from 10:30 or 11am until 1 or 2pm. When we were in Iowa last week, he didn’t want to miss anything so he got by for four days in a row with no more than a couple of 45-minute power naps a day (usually in the car). And then yesterday, he took a three-hour nap in the morning and another hour-long nap in the afternoon! But today he had a single 45-minute catnap in the car and that was it. The real miracle is that even with his wildly varying naptimes, he’s still been very consistent about bedtime and wake time.

I guess this is God’s way of keeping moms on their toes. I can’t plan on having two hours of “free” time every morning any more. I can’t even plan on having two hours of “free” time in bits and pieces throughout the day! It definitely has created a need for a bit more organization and pre-planning on my part, but also a lot of spontaneity. No more waiting till naptime for a shower, or I might not get one at all. And if he’s contented in the playpen, I have to take advantage of that time for blogging or dinner prep instead of hoping he’ll nap at a more convenient time. I need to know exactly what I need to get done without a baby underfoot each day and be able to work those activities in at a moment’s notice when he’s either napping or happily playing alone. And of course, both nap time and happy alone playtime can expire without notice, so being able to stop any activity midstream is a necessity as well.

But the delightful flip side of the schedule unpredictability is the unpredictability of Ryan discovering new “tricks”. In the past week alone he’s waved, clapped, and given a kiss all on his own. (The clapping we can get him to repeat at will, the waving is pretty hard to reproduce, and the kiss may have been either a fluke or a badly aimed nibble.) So I’m more than willing to be flexible if it means that when I go to get him from the crib after an unexpectedly short nap I might see him standing unsupported in his crib for a few seconds, or that he’ll reach out to me for a hug when I come in his room, or even that I’ll get a big laugh and some applause when he sees me.

Besides, even if his schedule is too difficult to cope with for a few days, I know all I have to do is wait a minute.

It's All In the Timing; or, It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times

Having a young child, I am discovering the great importance of "The Window of Opportunity". The Window applies at a number of levels, from long-distance planning ("Traveling is most manageable from 4 months to a year"), to the shortest of short-term goals ("He stopped wiggling; tape the diaper NOW!"), and everything in between.

I've learned to delay meals, chores, and phone calls so they coincide with nap time. This isn't as easy as you might think, though, as Ryan has recently become the master of the Fake Out. The Fake Out is especially effective for important phone calls, as they are generally the most difficult to stop in the middle of to tend to a crying child. This morning, for example, I needed to make a call and I knew I would be on hold for anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour. So this was my dilemma: Do I make the call before Ryan starts his usual nap, risking the I-changed-my-schedule-I'm-not-napping-now Fake Out, in the hope he'll still be sleeping if it takes an hour? Or do I risk the 5-minute-snooze Fake Out and call as soon as he closes his eyes? Would it be better to wait until he's been solidly snoozing for 10 or 15 minutes and therefore safely out of the 5-minute Fake Out Zone and risk him waking up mid-call? It's kind of like playing roulette: so many options on the table and only one is a winner, which means the house almost always wins (and by "the house", I mean "not me"). So naturally Ryan was calm and quiet for the entire 30 minutes I was on hold and even for the first 5 minutes of the phone call, but then burst into loud wails at a rather inopportune moment. Whoops. The house wins again.

Meals are almost as bad. Not only do you need to schedule eating time, but preparation time as well. Admittedly, the preparation part isn't always an issue, since some kinds of meal preparation actually count as playtime. Making a salad, for example, creates endless amusement for a small child in a front pack. No sharp knives or open flames are involved, only lots of walking around the kitchen finding ingredients, including things on high shelves and in low cabinets, which means lots of mommy stretching up on tippy-toe and then stooping to squat. Fun, fun, fun, do it again, mommy! But any kind of cooking that involves actual, you know, cooking, that can be a problem. I have long enough arms that I occasionally dare to cook over a low flame, standing as far from the stove as possible, turning sideways, extending my arm until it's about a millimeter short of dislocating my shoulder, and holding a long-handled spoon with my fingertips. (I'd like to see Rachel Ray try THAT.) But anything that needs to go in the oven, that's just not happening unless the Little Man is either happily in his bouncy chair on the far side of the kitchen or napping upstairs. And if he's happy and/or napping during prep time, guess what that means for actual eating time. Yup, fussy city.

And don't think that finding a set mealtime that coincides with naptime will help. Herb works flexible hours so our dinnertime varies by as much as 3 hours from night to night, but some kind of baby radar wakes Ryan up as soon as we sit down to eat no matter what time it is. We had a dinner party a few weeks ago and Herb actually had to take my plate and cut up my meat so I could eat one-handed while I held the boy. In fact, we've gotten in the habit of starting dinner together, then when Ryan inevitably needs to be held, I take him, and when Herb finishes eating he takes him and I finish eating. We're both getting pretty good at the one-handed eating thing, I must admit. I can even do it left-handed, as long as the food isn't too messy (mashed potatoes is good; mashed potatoes with gravy poses some difficulty). Somehow when your options are either eating oddly and creatively or possibly never eating again, you learn to manage.

Even with eating at odd hours, fitting in showers or laundry at 3pm (or 3am, for that matter), and making phone calls only when there's active snoring coming from the nursery, I wouldn't trade it for the world. Having a baby in my life right now is definitely the best of times.