since june, sebastian's 12.30pm afternoon nap has been an arbitrary thing. some days he would fall asleep five minutes after hitting the bed, other days it would be 1.45 and he'd be whinging, singing, crying or kicking the wall.

with all four amigos sharing one room, one whinging, singing, crying, kicker can interrupt the gentle circadian rhythm of this three younger siblings. so oftener than not, no afternoon nap for sebastian, which works out very well come bedtime but makes 6pm-7.30pm a bit tenuous at times. particularly if DADDY is not home.

today sebastian was rubbing his eyes throughout lunch (tuna fish sandwich mostly eaten and mixed vegetables mainly untouched) and since he had gotten to bed late the night before (magnificent charles and sebastian drove me to a meeting then went to magnificent's office for 20 minutes "or so" while magnificent "just" took care of a "couple" of things. charles is realising one of the negatives about having a son that now talks is that you can get, as he was, BUSTED. hahaha, he looked as sick as a parrot when i casually mentioned to him, "so, seb liked your office!") i threw him in bed for a nap.

and then made the mistake of settling myself down my bed. which i luurrrve.

one of my longest standing friends (since we were four) and a mother of twin girls once gave me some EXCELLENT parenting advice (she has given me plenty but this stands out as particularly stellar).

"never discipline your child by doing something that will make you angrier with them."

fabulous stuff. for example, if you have spent 30 mintues getting ready to go to the park and one of your children starts acting up, DONT discipline them by taking them home. that would make you LIVID, going to all that work just to turn around and come home. you all going somewhere to sit for three minutes will be an eternity and a HUGE punishment.

so when sebastian started singing, i requested he be quiet. but i got out of bed too late....(the bed's fault, not mine)....sebastian's five letter version of the alphabet song had roused jasper from his snooze. (jasper is usually the first to raise his shiny head from the mattress.)

sebastian's singing wasn't the worst crime in his repetoire. BELIEVE ME. but i was loving my illicit snooze, and to be jerked from it, and realise i had not acted in time to give jasper a full nap and would now have to live with the ramifications, oh boy. i zealously marched into the bedroom.

i attended first to the j, who was blinking and whinging confusedly. then turned to sebastian, who really had no idea i was upset. because really he hadn't done anything INCREDIBLY evil.

i realised this. and calmed down somewhat. i have to be careful punishing sebastian for something he has done to the triplets. can't make him feel his younger siblings are more important that his three year old world. waking jasper up is not good, but singing in bed is not that bad.

what to do? parenting is immediate. it was probably, maybe, possibly? wrong, but i got sebastian out of bed and let him go to the playroom. there were still two babies sleeping, might as well shuffle him out of there before he got them up too.

and then, to atone for not reacting fast enough to intercept the inopportune jasper wake up call, and also because it's fun, i went into the playroom and played school bus with sebastian.

Comments

[Trish]

Okay- this may sound silly and if it is, just shoot me ;) Heh. But since you have all of the kiddos sharing a room right now- at nap time, why don't you make it fun for Sebastian and get him a sleeping bag and let him camp out in the living room during naptime? (Depending on the size of the living room- you can even get a small tent or child's play tent and pop that up too). I mean- at his age, camping out is COOL and since at their age, the triplets need their naps- well, it could work out great. Give him some books to read while he's lying in his sleeping bag and then even if he doesn't sleep- he still has a bit of quiet time.

Okay- okay. Call me crazy :) But my kids LOVE to fake camp out- both of them- and they are 5 and 9. Wow- almost 5. Not yet. I'm not willing to give her up to being 5 just yet... Just a random idea!