A Napless Saturday

To nap or not to nap -- that is the question. Today was a very fun Saturday. But there was no nap. So the evening was a little hairy... to say the least. K & O love action-packed Saturdays. And they LOVE to skip a nap. But by mid-afternoon of a napless day they are bleary eyed and frazzled and sucking their thumbs. And by 5:00 of a napless day -- forget it. And 6:30 of a napless day inevitably involves at least one of us having a total complete meltdown (sometimes that person is Owen, sometimes that person is Kyle, oftentimes that person is HEATHER). Anyway-- from time to time on a Saturday we skip a nap. The beautiful bedtimes on napless Saturdays are so glorious (they go down like a breeze and are asleep in a snap -- tonight, for example, Kyle was literally asleep within 2 minutes of his head hitting the pillow). But man, the late afternoons of a napless Saturday are almost physically painful to witness... let alone experience. The boys are so naplessly miserable that your heart wants to just break for the poor napless little them. Lots of parents of other 2.5 year olds we know have started dropping the naps entirely. I don't think we're even close to that yet (and a napless day like today reminds me of that!), but it is really really fun to be able to have a whole nap-free Saturday without that huge chunk of time in the middle eaten up by the naps. Napless Saturdays for us mean the glorious bedtimes and the fussy afternoons and the meltdowns. But they also mean a whole full day of uninterupted family togetherness (and 3 cups of coffee each instead of 2 for Braydon and I!)...
Today we went for our weekly Saturday morning class at the Little Gym. Miss Jackie, our teacher, confessed to Braydon that she thinks K & O are "actually amazing" (her words, not ours). We then went to K & O's favorite park where they got to throw rocks in the river (one of their absolute favorite passtimes). See photo above. We then went to our friends Tom & Lisa, and their son Jack's, house for their big Lehigh v. Lafayette party. Guess what they had in their backyard for this extravaganza? A dream come true for K & O: they had rented one of those huge blow up jumping things that you see at fairs and festivals. The boys had a ball jumping with a whole bunch of wild and crazy 6-8 year old boys in there! Lehigh lost (click here), but we had a great time at the party. The end of the day was at home and included the boys new favorite video (A Dora the Explorer episode where a star falls from the sky and Dora and Boots sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star"), a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese, and the above-mentioned fussiness and meltdowns. The boys are now sound asleep (have been since before 7:00), and I'm waiting (with DVD set to hit "play") for Braydon to return with Chinese take-out. A happy ending to a napless Saturday.