Quiet And Why We Don't Necessarily Endorse It

Alida's favorite new pajamas. She fights getting out of these every time she wears them.

We've flat out given up trying to get the boys to nap on the weekends. If you walk into daycare on any given day of the week during nap time, you'll find them sleeping so hard there is drool soaking their cots and fabric prints so deep on their faces they look like scars. If you try to peek in on a boy napping at our house on the weekend, you'll likely find him on top of his nightstand getting ready to leap but not before screaming at his brother to put down the Iron Man because he was, you know, going to play with that right after his acrobatics.

So we gave up. Now we demand quiet and turn on a movie. If that doesn't work, they are turned outside to work it out for themselves.

Saturday we watched a movie. Elaine refused to nap as well. So the intimate group of five (he got the joy of a weekend home last weekend) of us hunkered in the living room to watch a movie while Alida snored upstairs. (She's had a bit of a nose thing going on lately.) Eventually Benjamin disappears, but he's quiet. So we watch our movie for the few more minutes we know we'll have quiet, too tired to investigate where he went off to. All we know is he is being quiet, and that is the only rule at the moment.

Eventually Benjamin reappears at the bottom of the stairs with a smile. I could have sworn I heard a toddler mouth-breathing somewhere in the stairwell, but really I hear kids all the time in my head. It is hard to differentiate the truth from my mental illness at this point. But here she comes, Alida peaks around the corner with a giant smile.

"I got my sister up from her nap," Benjamin announces with a flourish of hands presenting this darling child now standing in our quiet living room.

"Ben. How did Alida get out of her crib?"

"I got my sister up from her nap!"

Oh bother.