No Nap and All Play Makes Brigid a Force of Nature

Brigid has turned into the incredible non-napping baby. For the last three days she has not had a nap, and her early evenings have suffered as a result. For some reason, she just refuses to comply and does everything she can to avoid sleep. Even lying down with the boob did no good. She just flung herself around the bed. She's been very animated lately, running around like a crazy person. Could be the age, could be the bowl of raw sugar we give her every afternoon for a snack. (Joke...it's a joke.) And last night, she woke up about 4 and cried out. We tried to give her time to fall back to sleep on her own. I'm having a difficult time getting her in and out of the crib because of my back, so finally, Daddy got up and brought her in to me. It's very cute, because when he hands her down to me, she smiles in my face and says, "Hi!" She then snuggled down for some Mah Mah Mah, but only momentarily. She then proceeded to thrash about, clime around and generally make a nuisance of herself until 6 a.m. When she finally did drift off, I was exhausted, my back was killing me and I was afraid of waking her so I had to stay in the same (uncomfortable) position until she woke about 8:30. I don't know what's going on -- whether she's changing her internal routine, whether she really doesn't need a nap anymore (she does) or if it's just a temporary blip on the radar, but we have to figure out what to do about it because I can't have many more nights like last night. We may just leave her to her own devices in her bed for a longer period of time. It's torture to listen to her crying, but it's torture to be thrashed and smashed by a whirling dervish in bed, too.

Maybe she is moving into a new developmental stage. She's showing some signs of imaginative play and has been running around with her "horshies," making them fly through the air, all the while saying, "Horshies, horshies, horshies!" At babysitting at the Y, Jack said they had taken out some Toy Story characters and Brigid was playing with them, holding Buzz (or Buzsh) and Woody and interacting with them. Margaret was very much into horses at this age, and would play with little Breyer horses all the time, making up stories for them.

We had parent/teacher conferences today for Patricia and Margaret. First we went to Oak Street School for Patricia's conference, and her teacher, Ms. King, had wonderful things to say about her. Patricia's report card was exemplary. They don't give out letter or number grades in the elementary school -- just a 1-4 rubric, and Patricia was straight 4s. We were so proud, not just of the outstanding job she is doing, but because of something else she's doing: she's a reading buddy for a child with Down Syndrome. Her teacher said it's a volunteer thing. A few kids from Patricia's class meet with their buddies during the week and read to them and work with letters and such. But the other very heartwarming thing she said was how Patricia and her classmates go up to these special-needs kids on the playground to talk to them and play with them, something their monitor said never happens. It's those kind of reports that really make me proud.

We then went to the middle school to pick up Margaret's report card and visit with a few of her teachers. We really didn't have much to visit about; Margaret is a straight-A+ student. You can't get much better than that. The comment section was enough to make you blush. But she wanted us to pop in and say hello to her Spanish teacher and see the projects they had done around the room. We wanted to just say hello to her core teachers so they know we exist, and they all said how pleasant she is, always has a smile on her face and is always a delight to have in class. That warms our hearts no end because junior high can be so tough on a kid emotionally. Her math teacher just beamed when he spoke of her; her social studies teacher was pretty matter-of-fact: "She's an exceptional girl," he said. Although her English teacher wasn't available (her comments were glowing), we did want to see her science teacher to tell how much Margaret enjoyed her leaf-collecting project. We didn't get the words out before the teacher launched into how much she enjoyed Margaret's project. She got an incredible grade -- A+++. How can you get an A+++? Her teacher said an 8th-grade colleague even asked to see it. But again, more than that, it was the fact that all her teachers commented on her demeanor in class. That makes us very, very proud.

I posted the popsicle photos because Brigid has become a popsicle fiend. But she calls them "anudderone" because one night, I gave her one and asked, "Do you want another one?" "Want anudderone," she said. And they have been "anudderone" ever since.

The kids had today off, which was nice because although my back is still quite sore, I had to come to work for a while and they were very helpful in babysitting for us. We'll see if Brigid made this Napless Day 4. I can only hope that isn't the case.