The End of an Era

We bid a sad farewell to nap time yesterday.  Christian has been fighting nap time for the last couple months but I've won the battle most of the time simply by putting him in his crib and letting him scream until he fell asleep.  Then the last three days he's screamed for over an hour an never fallen asleep.  Finally yesterday as I listened to him scream, it suddenly got quiet much earlier than I expected.  I thought that meant he'd fallen asleep, but the next thing I heard was the click of his door and the triumphant cry of "I get out of my bed!" That's when I knew it was truly over.

I count my blessings that it took this long.  Benjamin was only 11 months old when he learned to climb out of his crib.  Bella about 2.  Christian took the longest and for that I am grateful because now that he can, he will never stay in there.  I tried many things to get him to go to sleep and none worked.  Today again we tried, and every time he simply climbed right back out.  Many times during the day he admitted, "I tired!" as his head lolled to the side.  Each time I encouraged him to go to bed and rest.  I promised special rewards afterwards and I promised we'd do nothing interesting while he was sleeping.  "We are just going to sit on the couch and stare at the wall and wait for you to wake up!"  Nothing worked.  We slugged through a very long, difficult day with cranky, tired Christian.  I don't know why he goes to bed at night.  I guess he's simply too tired to put up a fight after being up for so long.

On a different Christian related note, have you ever seen those stuffed animals that look like germs in stores?  I've seen them in museum gift shops and whatnot.  They have little plush versions of staph, salmonilla, etc.
 Like this: http://www.giantmicrobes.com/
I've seen these and never really understood the appeal.  The idea of hugging something that reminded me of something that could make me violently ill just didn't appeal to me.  However, Christian received one as a gift and has loved it!!  His generous gift giver is a veterinarian and she gave him a toy flea.  Which I guess isn't a germ, but is right up there with things I wouldn't want to cuddle.  I spent too many months scratching flea bites in Madagascar to ever spend a single penny on a toy version of this dreaded pest.  Never in my life would I have thought he'd like it either, but Flea has become a member of the family around here.  Flea goes everywhere with us now and I about laughed out loud as I heard him say today while hugging the little blood sucking pest, "I love you Flea" with the sweetest little boy voice you've ever heard.  Hats off to you, inventors of plush germs and vermin.  You know your audience.

Christian - never without his flea and his blankie.