Parenting a Toddler And Sleep

Written by Alex on June 11, 2014 - 0 Comments

My wife and I have a son who is almost 3.  While he is far from grown, his sleep-avoidance skills are legendary.  Here are some random thoughts I’ve had on that subject of late:

1. Our 2.5 year old has gotten so good with Legos, he’s now constructing his excuses for not going to sleep out of Lego-building blocks.

2. On tonight’s episode of I’m not going to sleep, our toddler tried to bamboozle me by demanding to read books.

3. Having resigned myself to the fact that our 2.5 y.o. son is determined to fight sleep, I’ve decided to capitalize — I’m hiring him out as a Night Watchman. Yes, he’s not physically intimidating. On the other hand, he changes the security code to gain access literally every 2 seconds – “Elmo. No Legos. No, not Legos, daddy, it’s Milk. No cookies. No, Peppa Pig.” He’s faster at randomizing passwords than a computer.

4. In tonight’s episode of “je refuse” to sleep, our 2.5 year old insisted he could not sleep without his “Fire Chief” vehicle. Which one of the 97,000 fire vehicles that we have strewn across our living room is the Fire Chief’s? Maybe it’s the one with my tears on it.

5. OMG! Where is Samuel L. Jackson when I need him?! Go the F**k to sleep!! Go directly to sleep! Do not pass “go!!” Do not collect 4 Elmo Cookies!!

6. In today’s episode of “Sleep Is For Wimps” our 2.5 year old exercised his contractual option to refuse the afternoon nap. Thereafter followed the longest afternoon of my life.

7. Man, I wish Freaky Friday were real, and I could swap with my 2.5 year old son. I would love it if my only task in life was to sleep for 12 hours a day.

8. Our 2.5 year old son and I are staging a battle of the Napoleonic Complexes. Unfortunately, it seems that bedtime is our mutual Waterloo.

9. “In Xanadu did Kublai Khan a stately pleasure dome decree . . .” and then Kublai Khan and his wife had a kid, and he thought “forget the pleasure dome, all I want is a nap, and royal architect who knows to soundproof the man-cave and put it on the opposite side of the house from the kid’s room.”
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge’ish

10. That you nap at daycare and refuse to go to sleep at night is like the biggest “F-U” of all time.

 

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