Nap Time

The irony of the post title is that is suggests sleep, however we are not getting too much of it around here. First of all, at this moment I am writing at 4:48am but I have essentially been awake since 1am with my bi-weekly round of really bad insomnia (much worse than my normal waking up 3 times a night). While there is nothing on tv, it does provide me with time to shop on line and blog in peace and quiet.

As for Harrison, he has starting to show signs he is ready to drop his one midday nap. Most notably is his insistence that he does not want to go to sleep. We prefer to turn a blind eye to this queue and tell him he has to sleep anyway because we haven't met a parent yet that actually encourages their child to stop napping. An hour or two of peace really keeps everyone sane around here.

Last Thursday however, Harrison refused to go to sleep. This wasn't the first time and in the past he agreed to some quiet time in his bedroom and actually did a pretty good job minding this rule for a three year old. On this day however he walked downstairs after 10 minutes in bed to find me and said (in a super saccharine voice, smiling), "I waked up, mom!" He did not accept the premise of my statement when I told him he never fell asleep, instead he told me he wanted to watch a movie with me. I sent him back up stairs. He came down every 5 minutes thereafter getting grumpier when I sent him back up.

Finally, I consented to go upstairs into my bedroom with my laptop thinking my presence on the same floor would appease him. No such luck. He came in every 5 minutes until I was pretty much yelling at him. 50 minutes from his first visit downstairs, I finally relented that this so called "quiet time" was over and we continued our day.

He was a sweet boy the rest of the afternoon until about 6pm. He began to drive me nuts while I made dinner and when dad got home and started playing, Harrison ended up in time out for hitting dad and not apologizing. Clearly a melt down was in the works. He pretty much refused to eat dinner, whined, kept getting out of his seat... in short we were ready to kill him. Instead we got him to bed a good hour early and he fell asleep hard.

I've been warning dad for a few weeks now that non-napping was in the works, and Michael has really been against the idea. I tried to tell him that it really isn't a choice, you can't force kids to nap. I can wean him off it so he sleeps more at night and then can make it through the day without a melt down. That said this was mostly talk on my part, it is only once or maybe twice a week he doesn't want to nap so I continue to put him down each afternoon and cross my fingers.

This happened again on Sunday while dad was home, so he got to witness the melee first hand. As we sat downstairs, Harrison kept leaving his room, stomping his feet on the floor, crying at the top of his lungs. He changed tactics and used every sure fire trick in the book like, "I need to go potty" and "I have a tummy ache" and incredibly "I had a bad dream" - all of which are usually get-out-of-jail-free cards to have a parent give him some love. At the end of the day, we put him to bed early and instead of falling hard asleep, he came out of his room twice (he had never done this before at bedtime) and was awake until pretty much his normal bed time. We were then "rewarded" with a 6am rise time from him, 90 minutes earlier than usual.

Yesterday however we *might* have turned a corner. I put him down around 2:15pm and then I put myself down for a nap. I woke up about 3pm to hear Harrison in the hallway. I asked him, nicely, to come see me and he didn't answer. I persisted and five minutes later he reluctantly came into my room. He told me he hadn't slept and that he wanted to go downstairs. I was actually stunned that he had been quiet in his room for 45 minutes (I even had the monitor on and did not hear him) but on principal I had him crawl into bed with me and rest for a few minutes. After a few minutes I realized he was breathing heavy and when I looked over, sure enough he had fallen asleep in my bed. Unlike other kids, he never sleeps in our bed (he usually starts poking us in the face to wake us up).

I know that was more info that anyone wants to hear about sleep patterns however it is a big deal (to the parents) around here and needed to be preserved via blog. Luckily a non-nap day hasn't yet collided with a Raina-had-insomnia day... oh, heaven help us if it does! As dad remarked, we will have a baby soon and lack of sleep with be the norm. I am already whimpering at the thought...