Adventures in Nap and Bedtimes

Okay, so this happened for the first time just before Alex left on his most recent trip down to Phoenix. Since then he's been giving me a hard time at naptime to go to bed. He refuses to sleep in his bed. When I close the door with him in his bed, I come back 10 minutes later to find him under the crib again. If I catch him falling asleep on the floor, I tell him to get up and go to his bed. His response is usually, "But I'm drinking my water, Mom." Even when he has no sippy cup.

The other day, I told him it was naptime and his clever response was, "Mommy, I just want to watch Toy Story 3 50 times. Just 50, no, 100 times and then I'll go take a nap." He actually said that. I guess he does have a concept of what numbers represent. I didn't know he had that. Silly kid. "100 times?!" was my response. Upon hearing my shock he replied with, "Okay, just 50. Just 50 Mommy."

Today after his Sunday nap, he's officially his father's son and his uncle's nephew. He woke up desperately needing to go to the bathroom and instead went into the closet and peed into a small basket of toys. When he finally woke up, and realized he wasn't in the bathroom, he started crying. This is when I heard him and ran into his closet to see a bare bum and his pants down. I asked him what he was doing and with a confused expression he said, "I don't know." His father's son because he sleep walks and his uncle's nephew because I'm sure my family will all remember the day Mauricio peed into the bed and went right back to sleep on it at 14 years of age.

Tonight, we had a hard time going to bed again. With quite the serious face, after I had yelled out, "Bedtime!" Orion came up to me and said, "Mommy, I don't want to sleep. I just want to stay up all night." I then proceeded to give him the old adage of Early to Bed, Early to Rise. I explained to him in quite detail what it means to be Healthy, Wealthy and Wise. I'm not sure he understood what wise meant. And for whatever reason, he did NOT want to be healthy. But when I explained to him that wealthy meant having money to buy things we need and want, he went on and on about how he wanted money because Santa couldn't buy the toys he really wanted so he definitely wanted money for toys at which point he finally stopped fighting me and went to bed. I guess the promise of money is enough to motivate even a three year old. So the moral of the story is: If you want your kids to go to bed, just promise them wealth. Just kidding.