The Demise of Spiderman

Naps are heaven here. I’m sure naps are vitally important in most households too. I take napping VERY seriously. Mostly because my kids have never been good at free play, nothing good comes out of them chilling on their own. So the only way I can ever get anything (and I mean anything, considering I can’t really talk on the phone, fold laundry, clean up a meal or ANYTHING that doesn’t have to do with them, around them) while they are awake. The only alternative is to plop Drew in front of the tv which is never my first choice.

Somewhere around two there started to be certain days where Drew would not nap. They were sporadic but it occasionally happened. And nothing good ever happened on those days when he didn’t sleep. First, of course, was the meltdown that usually occurred around 5pm. Just in time for the evening rush of dinner, baths and bedtime.

Then there were the scandals that would happen when he didn’t sleep. It started with the talking and playing in bed. We’d hear the voice through the monitor but hope that eventually it would fade off into a land of slumber. On a couple very traumatic occasions the sweet voice over the monitor was actually spreading love around his room. And when I say love, I mean something totally opposite of love. I mean something that requires a hazmat team to recover the remnants of what once was a nice room.

Bedtime, both of daytime and nighttime, requires a ritual. It consists of potty, water, chapstick, book, sometimes a pretend story and two songs. Then there’s usually some stalling tactics but eventually we close the door and it’s “quiet,” “don’t spread poop everywhere,” “I’ll give you anything if you stay in your room and sleep,” etc time.

The other day, however, I made a critical error in the art of naptime. I’ve made this mistake before but it was always with our books. I left a library book on his dresser. In order for him to reach it, it requires him to carry his stepstool over and hoist himself up to get the book. But hoist he did and the book was shredded. Oh boy.

So today was the fateful day when we went back to the library. I spent a couple of days talking Drew through how I was so disappointed, that we are not going to be allowed to take books from the library again if we aren’t going to be nice to the library’s books, how the library is going to be so sad, etc etc. I explained to him that he was going to have to tell the nice librarian what happened.

We worked on his whole speech and I sent him straight up to the librarian. Some version of I’m very sorry came out. And $12.95 later, we are now the proud owners of a shredded Spiderman book. I sure hope he naps today!