Thursday, January 27, 2011

A busy nap time

My excuse for not blogging yesterday:



This is what Oliver did during his "nap" yesterday.

Naps are intermittent around here these days. Some days he'll nap for hours. Others, not at all. Regardless, I enforce a "quiet time," so that on days that he doesn't nap, he has to stay in his room for an hour and can play quietly. Sometimes he'll fall asleep. Sometimes he won't.

Yesterday, he quietly removed all the clothes from the drawers of his dresser. I could hear him moving around, but figured he was just playing with toys or reading books. When the hour was up, I went upstairs to get him, and opened the door to that mess. Shocked, I asked him, "Oliver, what did you do?" He immediately confessed with a list, "Get clothes out drawers. Mess with blinds. And poop in closet." See, we have a rule that he's not allowed to mess with the blinds or go in the closet, so he knew that was wrong, but we never told him not to empty drawers, so he seemed quite proud of himself. Oh, the mind of a toddler. Of course, I immediately made it known that it was not okay to empty the drawers, and put him in time out while I contemplated his punishment. And snuck downstairs for the camera.

Oh, and don't worry, he didn't actually poop in the closet. He went into the closet to poop, but since he's still in a diaper for nap times (thank goodness!), he just pooped in his diaper in the closet. So I'm thinking it'll be a while before we try underwear for naps. Maybe high school, at this rate. No, potty training is not going well, but that's another post.

Because of the snowstorm, Daddy came home early right about that time, so we decided he had to stay in his room until he put all the clothes back in the drawers. Now, I know he wouldn't be able to fold everything and get it all to fit, and I'd have to go back and clean it up anyway, but we had to try to teach him a lesson. Well, it became a battle of wills. The parents, trying to get him to just pick up the clothes, and put them in the drawers, versus the child, who sat calmly reading books, and casually saying his favorite phrase, "No, don't want to." This went on for three hours. One of us would check on him every once in a while and urge him to put the clothes away, but he'd either simply say no, or scream and beg, "Mommy do it! Daddy do it!" Finally, I made dinner, and went up and told him that if he put the clothes away, we could eat tacos and berries for dinner. He must have been hungry, because then it turned into a game to see how quickly he could get them in the drawers. Hey, whatever works!

After dinner, I spent the next hour finally getting a shower, and then sitting and folding all those clothes (mostly my off-season stuff) and putting them away. Then fixing the blackout curtains he had pulled halfway off the rod, and picking up all the books he had strewn all over the room while he avoided his task. Too tired to blog. Oh, and I'm sick with a cold/sinus thing. Bonus.

Never before did I yearn for and yet dread nap time as much as I do today.

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