My sweaty, stealthy napper.
June 5, 2006Henry still naps. And not just a little nap, either—two hours, sometimes three. This is unusual among the 3-year-seven-month set, I hear, but I’m not telling him that, and thankfully he rarely reads my blog, so we’re cool. I am eternally grateful for his nap, for those precious hours in which I can work, or clean grout (nothing satisfies more than clean grout, am I wrong?), or talk to my imaginary friends on my handmade cardboard phone.
He wakes up from his naps soaked in sweat. Napping is hard! (Do your kids do this? With the sweating? What do you mean you don’t have kids? What are you doing here?) When he peels himself off his damp mattress, he’s so wet I could swear he’s simply spent his nap joyfully peeing himself.
It doesn’t help that he covers himself in a quilt and won’t let me turn his fan on. His room is like an oven, but he says he likes it. “I like to be all sweaty,” he tells me. Kids are just like us, with their misguided assertions. I keep telling him he can’t like it, because I don’t. But there’s no talking to him.
Until recently he refused to get up from bed when he was done with his nap, He did the same thing in the morning: he would wake and maintain his prone position. The only muscles he moved were in the jaw region, as he would open his mouth and shriek my name, over and over. Scott and I found this unpleasant. You can get up! We told him. You can get up and come get us! We rehearsed it with him, us pretending to sleep in our bed, encouraging him from our room to come to us. And sometimes he would, and how proud we were! Isn’t that cool, we said, how you can get up! He seemed into it, and then the next morning arrived, and the same shrieky Henry alarm terrified us awake. “I couldn’t because I too busy,” he said. Too busy scaring the crap out of his parents.
Then one day it sunk in. He could stand up! The people he lives with were telling the truth, for once! He didn’t, unfortunately, come get us in the morning, when all I’ve ever wanted is for my child to pad into our bedroom and climb into bed with us and cuddle for five or six more hours. No, he decided to try out his fancy new trick after his nap, on a day when I was so deep into my work that I’d forgotten I have a child; I was hunched over my computer when from behind me a damp little hand grabbed my shirt and small voice croaked “I came to get you like you said” and I leaped from my chair and shouted “Oh GOD who told you to do that.” And then I remembered.
Reader Comments (66)
I keep a monitor on so I hear him wake up so I don't get the crap scared outta me when he walks in the room to get me. Good luck finding something that works for you!
My 18 month-old *sometimes* sweats when he sleeps, but not always. (Yesterday I thought his diaper had leaked, his clothes were so wet.) I haven't figured out the pattern yet, though I do think it correlates somewhat with the length of the nap.
Today he dozed off in the car while I was driving to the library (big mistake!) and I ended up letting him nap in my arms for almost an hour while I read a book. It was blissful. And tonight will be awful, attempting to entertain him for the 3 or 4 extra hours he'll be awake.
At least he eats well. I think it's true, what someone said in a comment to a post a while back: either they eat well or sleep well, but not both.
Thanks for the laugh!
BTW, my mom said my FEET would get sweaty but nothing else. And stinky. Like, so stinky that when she'd pull the covers back from waking me up she thought I crapped in bed. Nope. Just the feet ma, just the feet.
and mine sweats, too. and takes 2-3 hour naps. at 3-1/2.
Wow, that was the least interesting comment EVER!
I also have a four-year-old who only recently caught on to the whole get-out-of-bed-yourself thing. But he prefers to come get me at 3:00 am, when he will announce, "Hi, Mama, I want to spend some time with you." The other morning he had a bloody nose and came to share THAT with me; I woke to a sweet little "Hi, Mama!" to see a CSI crime scene victim standing next to the bed. Scared the holy living hell out of me.
On the other hand, she could not fall asleep on her own for her first two years. I think it was the heart medication she was on because when she went off that it improved. Anyway, I would rock and sing before every nap or night sleep. She would snuggle up all sweet and put in song requests for a while. The odd thing was this, I could tell immediately when she had gone to sleep and I could walk her to her bed and put her down. Just as she fell asleep, her head would get really hot, then she would break into a sweat with little damp curls ringing her head and cool off and she was out.
Little ones are amazing.
At least he doesn't do what I did as a child and could get out of my crib, which is get up in the middle of the night and "help" momma. My mom had left some round steak out one night to be pounded with flour and cooked to produce gravy for the next day's dinner. Apparently I couldn't sleep, so I extricated myself from my crib and decided to "help" momma by opening the only container I could find, which contained coffee. I proceeded to open the package of meat, poor coffee all over the meat, and pound the crap out of it just like I'd seen momma do. The problem was my dad was in the Ph.D. program at Brigham Young in Utah, so not only was he not home, we had NO money. So when my mom tells the store she says she rinsed the meat off, repounded it with flour, and dinner turned out just fine! Hee!
Z gave up her daily nap at just over 3. But she still has "quiet time." Usually there is NOTHING quiet about it - she pretends school and dance class and god knows what else. Lots of jumping and singing. But sometimes she falls asleep in the middle of it all and sleeps for a solid 2 hours. Love it.
"Oh GOD who told you to do that" -- still laughing over here. I'm sure I'll be snorting about it at random moments all day long. :)