Wednesday, August 05, 2009

I'm Not Tired!

The transition away from napping is such a hard one. I was with my mom's club today and every single one of us who has a 3 year old was dealing with the same thing. Classic symptoms - 1. he refuses to nap at nap time 2. he sporadically falls asleep really late in the day or any time he's in the car 3. if he does sleep at all during the day, he won't go to bed at night until hours past normal bed time 4. if he doesn't sleep during the day, he'll go to sleep well, but wake up a few hours later and have a troubled night due to over-tired brain. It was amazing how we all had the exact same issues. I searched on the internet how many hours of sleep, on average, a 3 year old should get and I found between 12-13 hours a day. Wow - Benjamin never gets more than 9 and 1/2. 8pm - 5:30am. Anyone out there have a 13 hours of sleep kid that wants to trade? Anyway, so my experience today fit right in with my friends' stories - here's Benjamin after an hour of driving me crazy with whining and demanding and insisting he wasn't tired:


My only worry was that he would try to roll over in his sleep!



Not much new with Isabella, other than she waved and said "Bye" today to Kelly as he left for work. So cute. She's also gotten really strong. She climbs up ladders and all over playground equipment like a little monkey. She nearly ended up on the roof last week when Kelly forgot to take the ladder away after cleaning the gutters. Thank goodness I was out there with her! Here she is during one of her less-than-shining moments. She found the angel food cake pan but it didn't make as good of a shirt as she was hoping. It was stuck on her so tight I had a real struggle getting it off. She was so upset!

7 comments:

AJ said...

I do have a 3 year old who sleeps 12 hours, there are definitely days I would trade her (she knows how to cry to get what she wants, or when she's mad, or when she gets any sort of hurt, when her feelings get hurt, etc). But I'm not much of a morning person, 5:30 am would probably just about kill me off. Good luck!

Loni said...

Cute pictures! I love how kids can find any where to sleep as long as they are tired enough.

We officially don't call nap time, nap time. With Peyton now it is just quiet time. Where we watch a show quietly, most of the time he ends up falling asleep. Good Luck!

Megan said...

Benjamin sleeping on the stairs... what a picture!

Megan said...

Thanks for the comment - and suggestion on movies for our road trip! We have a broken portable DVD player that Bill can fix, but have been trying to figure out whether it was worth it... Guess that answers our question! :)

Tara G. said...

I remember taking naps until I was in kindergarten so I was not anticipating Maya stopping so early. I feel for you...I'm sorry he is still getting up so early. I don't know how you stay sane!! Maya hasn't been napping for a month now, she also has difficulty sleeping through the night and is waking up cranky. Is Bella still pulling out her hair?

The Bennett's Tall Tales and True Stories said...

I, too, took naps through kindergarten...and, well, even now, so I don't understand kids who "aren't" tired. Obviously Benjamin IS tired when he's falling asleep anywhere. ha! so funny! Max has never done that, but then again, he naps most days. He sleeps about 9-10 hours a night and then takes a 1.5-2 hour nap...so he's in the 12-13 hr. average toddler range. Sorry Michelle.

Brooke said...

I love the stairnap! That's what I call Extreme Napping. :-)
I know what you're going through with Ben . . . Jeffrey refused to take naps when he was 2 1/2 (aaaaaaaa!). The only way to get him to go down was to drive him around in the car until he collapsed. We had a connected garage in our house in Pittsburgh, so we just put a baby monitor inside of it and let Jeffrey nap in his car seat. It was the ONLY way to preserve the collective family sanity, let me tell you.