naps

Almost every day I take a nap. I started napping during my college days (the first time around), and I've been unable to break the habit since then.

When my kids were little I would take _really_ short 10 minute naps. I would pile up their favorite toys in a kid-friendly, non-choking hazard corner the LR and lay down on the floor across the entryway so I would wake up if they exited the room. For the most part it worked really well. I got my 20 winks and I woke up a much nicer Mom.

As they got older the kids sometimes took advantage of my naps. Like the time when E was about 3 years old and her favorite food was American cheese slices. I had a big stack of them on the inside of the fridge door so she could help herself whenever she wanted one. This was also the time of E's life when she was always on my body [ like a baby monkey--she also spent a lot of time 'grooming' me--searching my scalp for flakes of dandruff, cleaning my ears, picking at any of my bumps/scabs/pimples/etc]. When I napped she was usually lying on or near me. I got used to it and usually slept through it. So this one day, she decided to use my napping self as a table for a cheese slice picnic. (Of course I didn't know it--I was sleeping!) A few hours later, after John had come home for dinner and I was headed out the door to a church meeting, he ever-so-calmly remarked that I might want to know that I had cheese slices stuck to the seat of my pants....

Well. I suspect that now that the kids are older they still, um, "take advantage" of my sleeping time. Like today, when a lovely package of sinful dark chocolate arrived from my friend Linda. E spied the chocolate and then looked up at me with her big brown eyes:

"Mom, don't you think you're getting tired...Um, don't you think it's about time for your nap now?"

[Of course, my suspicions that E had her eye on my chocolate was confirmed after dinner when I unwrapped a chocolate and E--still eating her dinner--leaned over my hands and immediately started a coughing fit. Garlic fries spewing all over my dessert. Her way of marking her territory, I suppose....]