Sweetpea Sleeps

By Veronica

My daughter Sweetpea dropped the regular nap last fall. There were too many afternoons where I would open her door after “naptime” only to find that she had spent the entire hour bouncing on her bed. We sighed, resigned ourselves to her new maturity, and stopped putting her down for naps (though she is still required sometimes to play quietly for an hour).

This is a real change for her. You would think she would be thrilled, but Sweetpea has always been a little unusual about naps. By eighteen months old, she asked for them. She would walk across the living room to the bottom of the stairs, collapse on the first step and wail, “Nap! Needa nap!” She longed for sleep like the mother of a newborn. She hunted for nooks around the house in which to catch a few winks.

Sweetpea disappeared one afternoon when she was two. I could not find her. I searched the house frantically for five minutes, considered a panicked call to 911 and my husband at work, but first thought to walk around this chair, which had been facing the window:

I heaved a sigh of relief and added this spot to the list of Places To Search First. She has fallen asleep in it many times since then, including a few mornings when she came into my room to snuggle me, only to find I was occupied nursing her little sister instead.

Now that she is three and freed from the regular nap, she can rejoice in the freedom of fully conscious afternoons. Instead, I still sometimes round a corner into a room to find that she has once again found a spot, curled up and drifted off to dreamland.

I like that old chair, but I would like it even more if I could do THAT in it.

I love Sweetpea’s sleep. I envy it, too. It’s not just the sleep itself – I get a decent amount of rest, considering I have a baby, and Az the Husband is always willing to watch the kids so I can have a nap. It’s the surrender I envy; the certainty that home is safe, there are no pressing demands, and I can drift off here and now, for as long as I like.

And even when I don’t have a chance for a nap, I love knowing that I have made space in her childhood for that.