With everyone else in the family sick yesterday, I went home early from work at noon to try to help out. J went right to bed, and I had the kids for the rest of the day.<\/p>\n
The biggest challenge for me with the kids is nap time. In particular, C doesn’t like to nap when I’m around. Getting him to take a nap can sometimes take up to an hour. You’re probably wondering why I don’t just put him down for a nap – exert my parental authority, as it were. With naps, this doesn’t work. When I force him into a nap, he ends up crying in bed for a half hour or so.<\/p>\n
Yesterday was no different. After putting N down for a nap, I returned to C’s room only to be greeted by him saying "No Nap!" Naturally, I agreed. No, no nap, he was just going to play quietly while I read stories.<\/p>\n
And so the game was on.<\/p>\n
About 5 minutes later, however, N started howling. C didn’t want me to go, so I explained to him. "Don’t you hear? He’s sad. I want to help. I want him to be happy. Just like I want you to be happy."<\/p>\n
He agreed with this, and I went and retrieved N. <\/p>\n
Now, however, my nap manipulations were much tougher. C and N together can combat my sleep inducing activities much more effectively than when they’re apart.<\/p>\n
I tried two more times to put N down, but with no success. As for C, well, I had no chance. You see, I had inadvertently given him a new weapon to use against me.<\/p>\n
Everytime I’d suggest that he was sleepy, C would reply with "No, I’m not sleepy, I’m happy!" and this weird little forced smile.<\/p>\n
He used it the whole day.<\/p>\n
I’d say "time to go potty!" and he’d say "No, Not potty. I’m happy!"<\/p>\n
Time for dinner? Nope, don’t want to do that. C’s happy, after all.<\/p>\n
And that’s what I want, isn’t it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With everyone else in the family sick yesterday, I went home early from work at noon to try to help out. J went right to bed, and I had the kids for the rest of the day. The biggest challenge for me with the kids is nap time. In particular, C doesn’t like to nap […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[118,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-c","category-daddytales-funny"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6DpYi-happy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}