Interrupted Nap Time - Beyond Mommying

It takes me about 10 minutes to nurse the baby to sleep (yes, I still nurse my 11 month old to sleep pretty much every nap and bed time. Put your judgy pants away, I’ll deal with it if he still can’t put himself to sleep when he starts applying for college). The process involves my boob, his lights and sounds mobile and his soft blanket at nap, dark at night. And quiet. We have to have quiet.

Those 10 minutes are sacred. And crucial. If Pipsqueak gets interested and alert (which isn’t hard to do, he’s very busy), it’s over. That’s it, no nap time for Pipsqueak. And then the day is done, I have a fussy hysterical baby on my hands.

My older kids know this routine well, it’s been the same process for months. “I’m going to put the baby to sleep, please be quiet.” And sometimes they are. Sometimes they read quietly or play nicely.

But sometimes they just can’t help themselves and someone has to touch someone else and all hell breaks lose. And sometimes they just can’t stand to be away from me for a 10 whole minutes. Or they have a burning crisis that must be resolved immediately, even at the expense of baby’s slumber.

These are some of those crises that have interrupted baby’s going-to-sleep routine recently:

The springy thing came off her door.
His shirt was buttoned crooked.
His sister touched his tongue.
She needed a bandaid.
He wanted kisses.
She couldn’t find her leotard (For gymnastics practice. In 8 hours.)
Her brother knocked down her block tower.
The cat threw up.
A truck went down the street.
He is scared of ghosts (and monsters.)
They wanted to know if we could go swimming.
She doesn’t know what 7×8 is.

And then there was this morning, one of the “playing nicely” days except they weren’t playing quietly, the girls were playing very loudly with the legos and Doodle with his new puppy guitar which is usually off-limits while Pipsqueak is sleeping. I hear the crashing of blocks as the girls dig through the pile, the woof-ing of Doodle’s guitar and I’m helpless to do anything because if I yell down to them, it will all be over with Pipsqueak. Instead I just have to sit there and hope that eventually they’ll remember I’m trying to put the baby to sleep and quiet themselves down.

But I have no such luck and the girls begin having this very loud-talking conversation:

Honeybun to Sugarplum: “Can you please get me some more of the white blocks?”

Sugarplum: “uh huh.”

Honeybun: “And another Hello Kitty and a bunny?”

Sugarplum: “yep.”

Honeybun: “sorry if I’m being rude and bossy like I’m in charge of you or something.”

Sugarplum: “it’s okay. It’s just like you’re the princess and I’m the servant!”

Both girls loud giggle. Pipsqueak unlatches, bolts up to sitting and looks at the door. No nap for me this morning…