Sonja van Baardwijk-Holten wrote:
>
> Julia Thompson wrote:
>
> > Sonja van Baardwijk-Holten wrote:
> >
> > Is there a place that Tom takes things to and leaves them there?Check
>
> > there for your brain, he might have picked it up and put it somewhere
> > else. I've been looking for my own brain, plus a couple of alphabet
> > blocks that are missing right now.
>
> Thanks, found it. Aaaaah. Much better. Did you look in behind the radiator?
> Tom's favourite place to "hide" things....
Radiator? I haven't lived in a place with a radiator since I was 8
years old. I have a friend who doesn't ever remember even *seeing* a
radiator in her life.
Sam likes scattering everything and putting things into boxes and trash
cans. We have no shortage of open boxes at the moment (working on
that!) but we've learned to put the trash cans up where he can't reach
the tops of them.
> > p.s. what do you do when the kid doesn't want to go down for the nap at
> > the regular time, and when you finally get to where you have to put him
> > down for your own sanity and he falls asleep, he wakes up a lot earlier
> > than he ought to have?
>
> Options
> 1) Go insane
> 2) Accept it is happening.... again. Shrug it off and do something else to keep
> me from getting insane
> 3) Have a fit.
I went with 1), mostly. :)
> 4) Put him in the box, then go into another room to sleep and let him find his
> own way. After a short tantrum he usually ends up peacefully playing with
> something that fascinates him for an hour or so untill I'm awake and sane
> again. (This actually works!, They told me that the child doesn't necessary
> need to be asleep during nap time and that nap time is actually more for my
> benefit than for his. So the advice was to put Tom in the box for one or two
> hours at a time two times a day to get some rest myself. I'm amazed at how well
> that works for my sanity. Of course you do have to endure that initial tantrum.
> But it gets shorter over time.)
The real problem was that Sammy woke up after less than an hour, cried,
and his daddy picked him up and brought him downstairs. If I'd been
upstairs where he was napping, I would have checked his diaper,
comforted him a bit and then put him back in the crib. By the time he
was downstairs with his daddy, he was wide awake and happy to be held.
He spent the rest of the afternoon and evening being more clingy than
usual. So instead of having 2 1/2 hours of peace in which to do a few
things, followed by a few hours of him being able to entertain himself
while I did things at intervals, it was his demanding to be held 5
minutes out of every 15 from 4PM until I decided to start getting him
ready for bed early (8:15 as opposed to 9). At least we got him in bed
by 9, instead of the usual 10. So he woke up a little earlier than
usual this morning.
> 5) When Tom wakes up too early take Tom to bed with me. Cuddle him up in my
> arms and fall asleep again. Usually one of the better options when I'm really
> very tired and there is nobody else around.
We spent some cuddle time on the couch when I got to be too fried to do
much else.
> The rest is all about prevention:
The prevention didn't work yesterday. It usually works reasonably well.
I'm going to give him until at least 10 this morning before I interrupt
his playtime. I interrupted his playtime to go shopping around 9:30
yesterday, and it all went downhill from there. :P (Maybe if I'd put
him in the car around 2:30 and driven around for awhile, it would have
helped. Or stuck him in the stroller and walked around the
neighborhood.)
JUlia
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