farewell, my afternoons

It looks like Dennis' afternoon nap might soon be extinct, I'm sad to say. He's had some insomnia lately, staying up til midnight or later after trying valiantly to lie quietly in his bed and go to sleep. This is most noticeable on days when he's had a nice long nap. Today, he had agreed to nap, was actually in bed and being read to when I suddenly decided he should skip his nap. When I told him, you'd have thought he won the lottery! He did a happy dance on his pillow and asked "can I really get out of bed?". He agreed to play quietly in his room for an hour so I could get some things done, and he mostly held to this promise.

We played outside twice today, before lunch and before dark. He spent lots of time in his sandbox along with some quality time playing fireman in his play tower (he sure loves his new metal roof!) and on his swingset. Tonight, I was cleaning my room (which completely missed out on the cleaning frenzy last week), and he wanted a playmate or a movie or something. Desperate for some time to work, I discovered a secret weapon: the Moon Sand Construction Site that we bought for our Disney trip hotel time and hid when we got home. I spread out a big trash bag, opened the sandbox, and let him at it! We had left a set of Tonka construction vehicles in the kit last year that I'd forgotten about (excavator, backhoe, steamroller, crane, bulldozer, etc). He played with it for 3 nonstop hours, happily building roads and tearing them apart to rebuild. He played with it so long that his legs cramped from sitting on his knees on the floor, and he cried a little when he got up. He sat on a pillow for the last 15 minutes or so.

He went to bed easily. We cleaned his room together, and then I read him 1 story and he read 2 to me. He did ask if he could skip bedtime the way he skipped his nap earlier, but he laughed as he did so. He hugged me and said "Mommy, you're lucky. You get hugs 7 days a week!". I certainly agree with that! I'm sure going to miss the nap if this is truly the end of it, but him going to bed earlier will give me some time with David in the evenings. But there goes my alone time, my special cave time that I could use for whatever... Sigh... At least he stayed in his room playing alone for almost an hour, and that's some consolation for the 2.5 hour naps he was taking!