We’re still using wheels to get our youngest to sleep, and we’re right now in that twilight zone of her age and the time of year.
She’s almost three and like most toddlers still needs a nap. We do have something of a set pattern for it, since she does have nursery school twice a week, so that she gets a nap early, has lunch, then rushes over to school. Missing the nap means a very cranky girl for a few hours, and that missing nap does not necessarily translate into an early bedtime.
She rarely takes her nap in the stroller, preferring to reprise her role as the bomb in SPEED: she has to be moving at about 50 or she explodes. At night, she is now used to the stroller, thanks to the practical realities of winter weather and absurd gas prices. But as the days get longer, it may become a bit more difficult to get her to fall asleep at the eight o’clock hour.
We went through this period with our oldest, but of course at that time, we could concentrate all our efforts on her, since there was no other child around. By the time her baby sister was born, she was quite capable of falling asleep on her own and even stopped taking naps before starting at nursery school. We know that eventually our little one will get through, especially when we finally get around to buying bunk beds.
But we do have a few matters to address:
“Can I have a frozen waffle?” When she was teething, we often gave her frozen foods like bagels and waffles, and she likes to have one as she falls asleep. It’s natural for young children to want to eat something, either because it harkens back to the days of nursing/the bottle, or because it’s a small tactic to try staying awake. We were kinda dumb with Number One Daughter, because we used to give her fruit leather in the car on her way to Sleepyland, so we do feel a bit proud of ourselves for giving her home-made waffles. But we are also trying to break the association so that she does not always have to have food in her mouth to fall asleep.
“It’s not nighttime!” well, it’s not if the sun is still out, as it will be into the summer hours! We’ll be more flexible once school is out anyway, but since they’re not going to compensate by sleeping later, too, then we won’t let them get away with that too much. Dark curtains in summertime? Maybe…
But now, as the summer closes in, we have to worry about the sounds. Our little one is not usually bothered by the doorbell, nor the telephone. But there is one sound that most toddlers find impossible to resist, the most awful sound a parent wants to hear, especially a parent who is putting his children to bed, and knowing that they are almost there.
The sound of the ice cream truck…
The horror, the horror….