naptime

It's a time I look forward to each day. Without it, I'm completely drained by 4:00 p.m. and even with it I'm counting the minutes until relief walks in the door. And he gets a text if he's 5 minutes late.

Sometimes the girls go to their rooms and it's silent for 2.5 hours.

That's a good day. (And it's also rare. )

Most days, however, I have to listen to a few minutes of whimpering or laughing and have to tell them multiple times to go to sleep. Allie is still gated in her room. But she's directly across the hall from Audrey now, so she can see EVERYTHING Audrey does. And Audrey typically likes to play a little before going to sleep. And often, she creeps out into the hall, says she's not tired, or as in today,

"Mom, I'm tired of being in my room, so can I just sleep in your bed?"

"Um...no."

Today was an exceptionally difficult naptime.

At one point, during a moment of  sleep deprivation I let Audrey bring her princess blanket and heart pillow in our room to sleep on the floor. Allie, still standing at her gate saw the whole thing. I follow her screams to the end of the hall where big tears are flowing down her adorably chubby cheeks that are red from crying so hard. She's got the blanket from her bed which weighs about as much as she does, over her shoulder. She had seen Audrey leave her room with a blanket and pillow and didn't want to be left out.

I knew this was going to end bad. But, let her out anyway. She went into Audrey's room and kept pointing at Audrey's bed. She wanted a pillow (she doesn't have pillows right now). Of course, she had to be just like her big sister. So, she gets a pillow, which standing on end is as tall as she is and she carefully walks down the hallway into our room, the oversized pillow in one arm her ivory blanket over her shoulder. I don't even need to write how this ends. Obviously it was too fun sleeping on the floor, side by side, so they were sent back to their separate rooms within five minutes.

And the charade begins again. Allie crying and within two Audrey is back in mine begging for a drink, or snack, or movie, or something, anything to stall time. Ugh. At that moment I hear Jeremy come home and I know nap time is almost completely ruined. The girls get so excited to see their Daddy. Audrey was aware enough to hear him but Allie admitted defeat and went to sleep. Audrey never did sleep.

We began this process at 1:15. By 2:00 Allie was still making noise in her room, and Audrey was just starting a movie downstairs while Jeremy began mowing the yard. By 2:30 it was silent. Ahhhhhhh.

It's bliss when they actually go to sleep. But they never go without fighting it. Today was just an all out war.










Sarah