The Nap Time Wars

They're not pretty and they're fought on a daily basis. There can only be one winner but the battle begins again every few hours or so. Victory goes to the most stubborn; defeat to the most exhausted.

Right now, victory is mine. But it wasn't earlier when the Comcast guy pounded on the door and sent Major into a barking fury. (These barks are extra loud and vicious to tell me it's a strange MAN at the door. Friends and ladies usually get one or two of these barks as he races towards the door, which are then immediately followed by pathetic whimpering for me to hurry and open the door so he can be petted.) Any ways, all of this commotion happend about four full minutes after Aiden had fallen into quiet sleep that was won by about 15 minutes of patient nursing and soothing. So Aiden got a 4 minute nap and was too awake and entralled by the installation of the newer, more brightly lit cable box to go back to sleep.

Fast forward 45 minutes of screaming, crying and thrashing in my arms. He cried when I walked anywhere near his crib. He cried when I sat on the couch. He cried when I walked in the office to rock him in the computer chair. I was very close to not only loosing this battle but possibly having to surrender my entire day to an over-tired teething heathen. It was time to use the ace up my sleeve: the car seat swing.

Aiden loves swings and hates his car seat. So why put him in the car seat swing? The brilliant women at Graco have discovered that the combination of the carseat, the swinging motion, the vibration feature on the swing and the recorded SWOOSH "nature" noise exactly simulates a car ride - complete with wind noise from traffic speeding by - and lulls babies to sleep all without using a single drop of gas. (And saving this mom's waistline from doing the only thing you can do on a pointless car ride around town, which is driving-thru for burgers and ice cream!)

I put a thick blanket in the car seat, pulled the visor down low so all Aiden could see was it's black fabric, turned every feature the thing came with on HIGH and walked off. There was no crying. No noise. Just quiet! I walked back over to check on him after about 10 minutes and found him sleeping like this:



He had pulled down the visor and was in a fairly uncomfortable-looking position but he seemed pretty content sleeping cuddled up with Ralphie. (That's the blue elephant's name.) I love his little chubby foot hanging out!