The problem with Naps

Don’t let that title fool you – I LOVE naps.

I was exhausted – hard morning – so I decided to take a short nap before my kids got home and while my youngest was watching Jake (my husband works from home as well – he has plenty of supervision).

My problem? I have a hard time taking short naps!

I have been so exhausted lately, but I don’t take naps often. So when I do take a nap, my body gets greedy. It wants more and more and more sleep.

When I take naps, I set a timer on my phone, so I only sleep like 15-30 minutes. I knew I had about 30 minutes until my daughter got home from school (yay for buses and a bus stop right outside my front door!), so I could get in a 20-minute nap or so. My alarm goes off, I roll over and turn it off, and I do NOT want to get up. My body wants WAY more sleep. Now, I should have probably forced myself awake, but after I heard her come in the door, asked how school was, I fell back to sleep. I slept through her practicing flute and piano. I woke up again when it was time for my boys to get home from school. I groggily woke up when they got home. Sigh. They are much louder than my daughter. One son had 4 things to tell me: He made his AR goal (which just began this week – he is finally getting to do things early!!), he has some paperwork for self-manager for me to fill out, he is going on a field trip tomorrow to the dump/compost place (yay?), and his water bottle leaked in his backpack and got his band book and folder all wet. Great! Time to dry them out…. My kindergartner was complaining he couldn’t get his shoes off. Guess I should finally get up. Blah. I still want more sleep…. I guess I should get some dinner going as well – even though all I want is my bed back… Sleep… Precious Sleep. How I love you…

So that is my love/hate relationship with naps. I love them. Seriously love them. I just hate getting up from them. I wish I was better at power naps. Every once in awhile I am, but I need to figure out how to be a good power napper.

Now naps are very bad for my 2-year-old. If he takes a nap, he is up WAY too late! Like Saturday, when my husband let him take a 3+ hour nap while I was out…. Yeah… I was up with him until midnight. Naps are bad for my 2-year-olds (this has been the case for ALL my kids).