Naps

Simeon is working on giving up his nap.  This is hard in many ways.  For all my kids, they’ve been almost ready to give up naps, but the last step to napless-readiness seems to be to actually give up the nap and go from there.  That means that they’re not quite ready to give it up, but they’re almost ready, which means that we have some rough afternoons.  Also, I appreciate the blocks of time to do things (including get a nap of my own) that come from having the youngest nap.  The girls do an hour of quiet time each day, which is made (not by accident) to coincide with naptime, so that means that I have an hour of time to do what I need to do to recharge from the morning.  The other rough thing is that, when he does get a nap, he isn’t ready to go to bed when it’s bedtime.  Which means he pops out of the room repeatedly. 

[Simeon recently conked out in the car and didn’t wake up when I brought him in…or during the next 30 minutes of noise and normal life.]

On the other hand, Simeon is good at doing quiet time already.  I put on a CD for him and explain that when it’s over he’s done, and he spends his quiet time looking at books and listening to the CD.  So I really can’t complain too much about that, except that he often has a potty break in there, and it’s usually about 5 minutes after I’ve fallen asleep for my own little nap, hoping for 15-20 minutes.  Still, it’s been the smoothest transition to quiet time we’ve had yet.  And, when he doesn’t take a nap, he falls asleep right away upon being put to bed. 

It’s strange to have the baby growing up so much.  He reminds me that he’s not the baby, Quinque is the baby.  He’s a big boy.  And too many times I have the feeling that he’s right.  He can put away silverware, clear and scrape his own plate and put it in the dishwasher, wash his own hands, open doors, water plants, put together puzzles.

The thing is, each phase has its joys and difficulties, so I’m happy to say goodbye to each phase in theory because of the difficulties, but I watch my kids grow and realize that I can’t stop them, and I can’t get the joys of that particular phase with that particular child back.  It doesn’t matter that there’s another child in line to become that age – having multiple kids doesn’t mean that I’m immune to this feeling.  I don’t want to get to the day that Naomi stops saying Cingorilla.  I don’t want to get to the day that Hannah decides that “made at home” isn’t some kind of great honor and distinction.  And I have mixed feelings about Sim giving up naps. 

This isn’t any kind of new discovery, of course.  It’s another mother being reminded to enjoy things as they come.