NappieUpdate
Abbie didn’t nap again yesterday afternoon. She’d better not be trying to drop her afternoon nap; she’s far too young. Reference-less articles I found on the Internet say she shouldn’t drop her nap until at least age 4. It’s important that she continue napping for her mental development, to keep her in an agreeable mood, and to give me a chance to nap.
I’m bouncing around different ideas to try to keep that nap intact. In yesterday’s comments, Becky explained that her oldest has dropped naptime, and in turn her shower time. Instead they have “quiet time,” which isn’t a term I’m familiar with. Is that when only one child is screaming? That’s usually as quiet as my house gets.
I believe the idea behind quiet time is you put your child in her room, explain that she needs to play quietly for 30-60 minutes even if she doesn’t want to nap, shut the door, and then knock back a few limoncellos in the ensuing peacefulness. Unfortunately Abbie is a bit young for quiet time. I can and do still lock her in her room, but it’s not quiet. It’s kind of like the gentle roar of a moderately sized waterfall as she constantly bounces around the room, punctuated by the occasional thud of books being swept onto the rocks below.
Even when she doesn’t sleep I leave her into her room for about 45 minutes, or about how long it takes the boys to get ticked off that they’re stuck in their cribs while she’s free to pull books off the shelves. The idea is that the removal of stimulus will help calm her and give her the refreshment she needs to last until at least suppertime without melting down. We’re in good shape as long as she doesn’t suffer any unexpected rebukes, such as the one from her giant stuffed dog when he refused to ride her Little People train.
I’d like to try putting her down for a nap sooner, thinking maybe she gets overtired staying awake until late afternoon. An earlier nap doesn’t really work for us, though, because she has other things scheduled for mid-afternoon. Mostly I hate to change her naptime because that would rob me of that glorious time when all three children nap simultaneously. Instead I’m setting them down at night a few minutes earlier to compensate for the 90 minutes of sleep she loses without a nap. That change I can easily do since it creates extra simultaneous sleeping at night.
I’m also trying to wear her out earlier in the day. Ideally this would involve putting shoes on her feet and sending her in the backyard to chase the dog while I give a semblance of supervision by looking up from my newspaper every few minutes. Unfortunately we live in Iowa, and as I write this it’s 10 degrees outside. The dog barely wants to go outside, and I’m not about to sit out there reading a newspaper, so there’s no way she’s going outside unless she sneaks out with the dog, which she only does a couple times a day, sometimes even while wearing a shirt. Instead I’m wearing her out in our cramped house. Mostly this involves bouncing. She bounces in my lap, we bounce from room to room, and, in a particularly stupefying display of parenting, I encourage her to bounce on the bed.
I’d like to cut sugar from her diet, but I don’t know where. Her breakfast cereal is Kix, which is mother approved, and since mothers inherently know more about parenting than I do, I can only assume that it’s low-sugar. Her snacks are fruit, which are high in sugar but it’s natural sugar so it’s the good kind, and Goldfish, which may lead to hypertension but not hyperactivity. She drinks very little juice. Sure, she eats a quarter-bag of marshmallows everyday, but she’s learned to snitch those when I’m not paying attention so I don’t know what I can do to prevent that. Besides paying more attention to her of course, but I’d need to take a nap to increase my attentiveness, and obviously I have no free time for that.
I’m bouncing around different ideas to try to keep that nap intact. In yesterday’s comments, Becky explained that her oldest has dropped naptime, and in turn her shower time. Instead they have “quiet time,” which isn’t a term I’m familiar with. Is that when only one child is screaming? That’s usually as quiet as my house gets.
I believe the idea behind quiet time is you put your child in her room, explain that she needs to play quietly for 30-60 minutes even if she doesn’t want to nap, shut the door, and then knock back a few limoncellos in the ensuing peacefulness. Unfortunately Abbie is a bit young for quiet time. I can and do still lock her in her room, but it’s not quiet. It’s kind of like the gentle roar of a moderately sized waterfall as she constantly bounces around the room, punctuated by the occasional thud of books being swept onto the rocks below.
Even when she doesn’t sleep I leave her into her room for about 45 minutes, or about how long it takes the boys to get ticked off that they’re stuck in their cribs while she’s free to pull books off the shelves. The idea is that the removal of stimulus will help calm her and give her the refreshment she needs to last until at least suppertime without melting down. We’re in good shape as long as she doesn’t suffer any unexpected rebukes, such as the one from her giant stuffed dog when he refused to ride her Little People train.
I’d like to try putting her down for a nap sooner, thinking maybe she gets overtired staying awake until late afternoon. An earlier nap doesn’t really work for us, though, because she has other things scheduled for mid-afternoon. Mostly I hate to change her naptime because that would rob me of that glorious time when all three children nap simultaneously. Instead I’m setting them down at night a few minutes earlier to compensate for the 90 minutes of sleep she loses without a nap. That change I can easily do since it creates extra simultaneous sleeping at night.
I’m also trying to wear her out earlier in the day. Ideally this would involve putting shoes on her feet and sending her in the backyard to chase the dog while I give a semblance of supervision by looking up from my newspaper every few minutes. Unfortunately we live in Iowa, and as I write this it’s 10 degrees outside. The dog barely wants to go outside, and I’m not about to sit out there reading a newspaper, so there’s no way she’s going outside unless she sneaks out with the dog, which she only does a couple times a day, sometimes even while wearing a shirt. Instead I’m wearing her out in our cramped house. Mostly this involves bouncing. She bounces in my lap, we bounce from room to room, and, in a particularly stupefying display of parenting, I encourage her to bounce on the bed.
I’d like to cut sugar from her diet, but I don’t know where. Her breakfast cereal is Kix, which is mother approved, and since mothers inherently know more about parenting than I do, I can only assume that it’s low-sugar. Her snacks are fruit, which are high in sugar but it’s natural sugar so it’s the good kind, and Goldfish, which may lead to hypertension but not hyperactivity. She drinks very little juice. Sure, she eats a quarter-bag of marshmallows everyday, but she’s learned to snitch those when I’m not paying attention so I don’t know what I can do to prevent that. Besides paying more attention to her of course, but I’d need to take a nap to increase my attentiveness, and obviously I have no free time for that.
posted by Matt at
11:32 PM
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