Friday, November 20, 2009

I Can't Believe I Actually Said That...

As anyone who is a mom knows, raising children certainly has MOMENTS. Nora is almost 27 months old and in the throes of the terrible twos. As many of my friends with older children have told me, I have two years of this to look forward to, because apparently three year-olds are worse than two year-olds. Yay.

Our latest struggle has been with nap time. I can tell she still needs a nap each day, and I know that *I* need her to have a daily nap. However, since we moved her into a toddler bed a month or so ago, she has been almost categorically refusing to stay in her bed and take a nap during the day. Instead of napping, she gets out of bed and plays in her room. Of course, she winds up removing things from her bookshelf and basically trashing the place.

Most days, she does wind up exhausting herself, crawling into bed, and taking a nap eventually. Today and yesterday, she wouldn't. Even worse, when I led her back to bed, she would simply get back up and SMILE when I caught her up. It was like she was MOCKING me. I. was. livid.

So, I left her upstairs, went downstairs, and cried, watched a "Grey's Anatomy" rerun, and posted something on my F*cebook status. It went along the lines of "does anyone want to trade a church for a two-year-old?" Because at that moment, I would have even taken SJ over dealing with Nora.

Things got better...I calmed myself down, and we took a drive (I got a Coke at Burger King) and she eventually fell asleep. I did however, refuse to let her watch "Sesame Street" tonight as punishment. She is now in bed for the night. My parents are going to watch Nora on Tuesday night, so I can look forward to 24 hours of child-free time. I plan on mostly using the time to clean the house and get things ready for Thanksgiving, which we are hosting this year. However, I am looking forward to sleeping in on Wednesday morning. The thought of sleeping past 7am makes me excited. Amazing what parenthood does for you...

2 comments:

Terri said...

There are days when I would take a 2 year old over a 17 year old in a heart beat. sigh....I hope you enjoy that respite from child care and can actually sleep as long as you want and need!

Mary Beth said...

I'm with Mompriest re my 20 year old! But I'll never forget a friend (with 3-month-old suffering colic) who told me in horror that the night before she had considered whether they had a bucket large enough to drown him in.

If we don't tell these stories, no one knows what it's really like.

Hang in there.