What a Willful Beast We Have Spawned!!

Weekends are what we all look forward to. During the week, while we work - and even if we don't, that is. Only 4 days into my new gig and I'm already back into the usual 'can't wait until the weekend' mode. It's sort of what we're all programmed to do, right?

Even as a full-time stay-at-home-mom, I relished weekends . I frankly couldn't wait for Papi to be home and take over a little bit of kid-care, visit with friends and family, and to do a couple of fun things around town.

Why are weekends so damned important? Because we get to 'catch up' on sleep. Or that's what I did for more than 30 years before I had my little Won. Now, sleep on the weekends is for not. Well, that's not entirely true. NAP TIME ON THE WEEKENDS IS FOR NOT.

The little Won's daycare/pre-school provider, hereinafter referred to as "school", miraculously transformed my non-napper into a daily, routine napper. During the week he takes a nap at school at the same time every day, for several hours.

The weekends, however, suck when it comes to nap. The little Won fights and fights and fights going to sleep. I am so (excuse my language) FUCKING tired of it I can hardly contain myself sometimes. It seems like nothing we do works. Nothing. It's infuriating because the little Won always wins the fight. Little shit.

Here's how our weekend usually works:

6am wake, roll around in bed for a while
7am get up get dressed, eat breakfast, gather needed gear
7:30am, get coffee and muffin, take the dog to the park
9am arrive home or spend a couple of hours running errands, going to the kid park, having a playdate, going swimming at the Y
11:30am arrive home, eat lunch
12:30pm retire to little Won's room for regular routine of:

1. a fresh one (diaper)
2. conversation about the going to sleep process
3. several stories/books

1pm lights out
1pm-3pm attempting to utilize psychological warfare techniques to force him to relax on his bed long enough to close his eyes and fall asleep (he has never gone to sleep without me or Papi laying down with him). At night we use the house is dark, Mom & Pop are going to sleep, too, etc. routine but nap requires something all together different. What exactly it is, I do not know. The warfare techniques that we currently employ include:

• Allowing him to choose one quiet toy to take to nap with him;
  
• Creating interest in some toy, usually a stuffed animal, to use to get him back on the bed when he's on his way off:

"Won, it's mine".
"No, Mommy!"
"Won, you can have it if you lay down".
"Okay."

• Unscrewing the light bulb to the table lamp next to his bed so he can't turn the light back on in an attempt to stay awake;
• Using blackout shades to darken the room - in all of the rooms upstairs so no light seeps into his room;
• Placing a "child safety" door thingy on the inside doorknob of his room so that he can't leave his room if he gets off of the bed;
• Removing all of the child size chairs, tables, etc. that he can't move and climb up on to turn on the bedroom overhead light;
• Removing all of the toys of interest from the room;
• Providing sleepytime tea, water, milk, or other drink requests and allowing them to stay in his room for the duration of sleep time; and
  
• Pretending to be asleep regardless of any conversation or other physical manifestations of unwillingness to sleep that may present;

Sometimes that works but more often than not it doesn't. We're usually still at it after about 1.5-2 hours. And NO, skipping nap is NOT an option. Won is an absolute Pill if he doesn't get a nap - he runs around hitting the dog, kicking the cat, spitting on me or Papi, tearing the house apart. When he's overtired, no amount of playdough, stickers, fingerpaints, sand, or coloring will keep him occupied. He just runs from room to room being a freak. I feel I'm in a real quandary when this happens. Don't fight the nap and I have a child that with a little practice could be a real sociopath. Fight it and I want to commit child, spouse, or self abuse. But I digress, by 'at it' I mean, trying to keep him on the bed, being hit, kicked, yelled at and ready to lose my mind. WITH NO SLEEP.

Needless to say, I tend to get tired out by this process. So the physical manifestations of an unwillingness to sleep tend to win out. These manifestation include but are not necessarily limited to: breast groping, hair pulling, eye gouging, hitting (the face), kicking (the kidneys are best), and head butting while I pretend to be asleep. I do my best to pretend that these things are not happening but after two plus hours of figting it and trying to protect myself from physical harm while not moving (because I'm supposed to be asleep, after all), I often get really pissed, yell a little bit, slam a door and then let him get up (I know these techniques haven't been proven by research to be totally effective 100% of the time - at least to get the results I'm after). But I'm fucking spent. On the other days, after more than two hours of both of us trying, we try the car. My reasoning is that it's only for nap. Today Papi put him in the car and he fell out in less than 5 minutes at 65mph. He was so overtired that Papi even successfully transferred him into the house with no problem. These are not typical results.

The other problem with having no nap is that Papi and I don't get any quiet time together. It's really important that we get this few minutes of 1:1 time occasionally. Now that I think about it, Won is asleep!

Gotta go!