Weekend conversation about afternoon naps:
Gertrude: I don’t want to take a nap. (Cries in protest.)
Me: I’m sorry sweetie. But you have to. If you don’t, you’ll be crabby all day.
Gertrude: Matilda doesn’t take a nap.
Me: Well, when you get bigger you don’t need to take naps anymore. Although I’m bigger and I want to take a nap.
Gertrude (beginning to sob): I try to grow bigger but it doesn’t work!
And there she begins to wail. Wail against the injustice of being a child.
Poor kid. It’s tough being the youngest.
In Gert's case, she needs a nap in the worst way, especially because she lays in bed at night for two hours talking herself to sleep. So, if she doesn't take a nap she turns feral around 5 o'clock. She always falls asleep and sleeps hard and long. She just has an unnatural sense of fairness and sees the fact that no one else sleeps as a slumber inequity in our house.
ReplyDeleteShe also has a highly developed sense of righteous indignation that she has no qualms about displaying. One of these days I expect her to have a freedom march after lunch, demanding her rights of non-sleep, only to have the revolution collapse before dinner when she’s delirious and trying to figure out fingerpaints.