rest time is over so I'm leaving town

I had a dinner date with my friend Leslie last night and when I picked her up, her smallest son was in the high chair eating potato chips. Jake is eighteen months old, which is shocking to me; I swear he was just born yesterday and now he's walking and trying to talk and pretending to help her vaccuum the living room. It's amazing. 'He's not a baby any more!' I said (stupidly, but still).

'No,' she said. 'Thank goodness!'

I know what she means. I love babies, but I don't actually miss having one in the house; now that Charlie is finally potty trained, we are a house of Big Boys, which is wonderful!

Except . . .

It's time to give up Enforced Rest Time.

I know, can you believe it? But it's true. We've strung this nap/rest thing out for FIVE AND A HALF YEARS. Every day since Henry came home from the hospital there has been some sort of designated Everyone Will Rest period during the day. We have built our family life around this. And it has kept us sane.

Recently, though, we've noticed that there is not much napping going on, which only makes sense. Henry is really too old to need a nap every day; for a long time, I was able to sucker him into sleeping by laying down in the bed with him (thus scoring my own nap as well) but he finally caught on and refuses to let me do that now. Instead, he spends Rest Time going potty and putting multiple band-aids on his poor gnawed fingernails. And since he has to BRING me EVERY SINGLE USED band-aid, there's not much rest for me, either.

Charlie could really still use a nap during the day, but has somehow convinced himself that he is MISSING SOMETHING if he falls asleep while Henry is awake. When we go to get him up in the morning (because yes, he will stay in his bed until we come to get him, which is wierd since he gets up repeatedly at bedtime, but whatever) the first thing he says is, 'Is Henry up yet?' How cute is that! But he now spends his Rest Time either jumping on the bed (not restful!) or bringing me his digital clock to ask, 'Is it time to get up?' I'm trying to teach him what TWO ZERO ZERO looks like, but he prefers to have me read the clock for him. Every eight minutes for the entire hour.

Recently, Rest Time--with the band-aids and the jumping and the no resting--has become the bane of my existence. Instead of being a peaceful hour (or two! and a half!) where I could Get Things Done, it has turned into the hectic 40 minutes between 1:00 and 2:00 where I race around like a idiot trying to load the laundry and clean the kitchen and return phone calls and check my e-mail (although, as you know if you have e-mailed me recently, I don't actually ANSWER the e-mails because THERE ISN'T TIME).

And then the boys get up, at EXACTLY 2:00 (because I taught Henry to tell time, what was I thinking?) and they want to have a snack and they want to play outside and they want some ATTENTION for god's sake and I'm still wondering when I'm going to get FIVE MINUTES to myself today. And they are cranky from the boring hour in their rooms and I'm cranky because they don't STAY in their rooms and we still have like FOUR HOURS to slog through before Wade comes home and it just sets a bad tone for the rest of our day. So, you see, this is no longer really restful or productive.

Yesterday I was telling our psychologist about this, and about how much the no-napping thing STRESSES ME OUT and about how difficult the afternoons are any more because Henry is so caught up in his own head and Charlie is all hepped up from an hour of jumping on the bed, and she said, 'I think you may need to rearrange your afternoon. Maybe go to the park after lunch and have quiet time a little later in the day.' And I thought, THAT IS BRILLIANT! Although I did wonder what's wrong with me that I couldn't figure that out on my own but needed to pay a health care professional to help me, but whatever. I have a solution! Whoo hoo!

I also have Big! Plans! to give you all a nice list of BoB-worthy Friday Playdate posts, not so much because I think it will persuade you to vote for me but because it will get me off the hook of having to come up with anything new to write about; of course, with no Rest Time and this whole travel thing, it will have to wait (oh, and it took me half an hour this morning to find that post about Charlie not wanting to go to bed. Ha ha! I'm doomed). In the meantime, throw some BoB love at Chag (America's Funniest Stay Home Dad) and Ramblin' Educat (if only ALL teachers were this cool) and the dudes at DadCentric (because they serve drinks). And let's all hope that I survive the rest-free day, and can find some clean underwear.