Thursday, May 08, 2008

Unscheduled sleeping time

We have house guests and pregnant ones at that so we did the honorable thing and gave up the bed for the blow up mattress in the boy's room. We put Finn down at his regular time and Henry went down when we did but getting set for bed Finn woke up and wanted to talk about the whole operation. He called the action like a young Vin Scully while Kate and I tried to ignore him, hoping our inattention would lead to going back to sleep. It worked, or would of I think if we were better at following through with our parenting ideas and didn't both tell him to lay down and go to sleep. Henry woke up early early with a hankering for some milk and his impatience with Kate's speed in delivering that Milk woke up Finn. He picked up his narrating of the events "Daddy Sleeping?" Mommy feed Henry?" as if he had been interrupted mid stream and was just getting back on track. We tried to get him to go back to sleep but being in his room proved to entertaining for him so I got up with him and brought him downstairs. I didn't realize how loud my son was until trying to keep him quiet at 6 in the morning. He wanted to hold his uncle Jesse and sit on the counter and do any number of things that sleepy daddy was keeping him from doing. I got Finn some Milk, a bowl of strawberries and sat him at the table trying to sleep a little more on the couch. I would drift in and out of sleep seeing Finn first at the table, then inches from my face with a bull-truck, then looking out the window at the early commuters. He kept crawling up and laying down with me for three seconds and then climbing down to get something and coming back. He asked me to play trucks with him, go outside with him, go into the kitchen with him, do anything with him instead of just lay there but I was so tired. i finally said "Finn I need you to play by your self for a little bit" not thinking that he would ever do it or even understand what I meant. I was wrong, he did understand and as he dropped his head and dejectedly said "OK daddy" in the saddest toddler voice you can imagine my heart dropped. He didn't know it was too early to get up, he just knew that him and daddy had a chance to play and daddy wouldn't play with him. He walked over and grabbed his truck and walked to the foot of the stairs to call for Mommy. Maybe she would come and play with him. I got up and turned the lights on, grabbed my boy and sat him on the kitchen counter. I told him I loved him and he smiled up at me, all was forgiven.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

OH JAMES, Thank you for being.

Anonymous said...

Perfect parenting response!! Now he feels valued. Great job.