My Favorite Time Of Day

I feel a little guilty admitting this.

This is what is so puzzling and guilt-provoking to me: That I can love my child fiercely, be willing to sacrifice for him, delight in his quirks (and he has them!), wish he would never grow up, love him more than I have loved any other child, and yet I have come to crave and relish Noah's Naptime more than any other time of the day.

Naptime.

There's a blissful quietness brimming with possibilitites all wrapped up in that one word, don't you think?. What will I do with Naptime today? Will I read a book? Take a shower? Read the mail? Blog? Mop the floor? Swab the toilets? De-clutter the house? Polish my toenails? Exercise? Plan the meals? Fold Mount Laundry? Make a phonecall? Empty the dishwasher? Read my Bible? Take a nap myself? Oh, I could go on and on...

Today, being that I'm a little under the weather with a cold and a UTI of all things, I decided to go for the Take A Nap Myself option. It. Was. Glorious. I rummaged through my winter clothes until I found my ginormous cozy faded pink bathrobe. I grabbed that, a couple pillows, a tissue, and a glass of water, and cozied up on the couch where I knew nothing else for about an hour. Moms don't really get sick days you know, so we take what we can get. An hour all by myself asleep on the couch was a rare treat today. Other days, I usually go for an activity that I Positively Cannot Get Done With A 3-Year-Old's help.

And the guilty part is that I treasure every second.

Don't you?

Comments

Ruth said…
I agree 100000%. I too have felt guilty for wanting my two to have SOME overlap between their naps. A former student of mine wrote on her blog once (she has a 10 month old girl) that if your child doesn't take a nap it's like working a 12 hour shift without a smoke break. She doesn't smoke, but that is a good analogy! Parenting is exhausting for starters - hence one reason why the break is so welcome, but as you mentioned it's also a challenge to get everything else done - cooking, cleaning, laundry, and in my case grading papers, emailing students, etc. while caring for really young children. So in reality most days we're not actually taking a break but just using the time to do other work. As much as I have longed for my two to have one nap be at a similar time the past almost 9 months, I usually don't get more than 20 minutes overlap and some days (like yesterday) there was ZERO overlap between their naps. It's still a goal of mine though! I will keep working to get Ian's nap to coincide with Nadia's. I'm also starting to work on Nadia having some room time as that's just about as good as naptime! It didn't work this morning bc Ian got up at 5am and Nadia slept in until 7am so his first nap started when she was having breakfast = no room time for Nadia today.
September 9, 2010 at 1:33 PM
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