Mourning Naptime

The kid has moved into being "an afternooner" at his school. This means that he now stays upstairs at school in the afternoon, instead of going downstairs for a nap. It's another sign he's growing up, which is a little sad in and of itself. But, really - total honesty - I am so missing the break we got when he took a nap. Because when he's awake, I feel obligated to focus attention on him, which leaves me no opportunity to do anything for myself (i.e. see previous post). And, yes, I do feel selfish feeling and admitting this.

There are reasons the lack of napping is awesome. For example, yesterday we went to a big aquarium in our area. We didn't even leave home until after 11, then actually get there til after 1. This, normally, would have been the start of the kid's nap time. Instead, it was the start of fun :) He took a short nap in the car, which was good, then he was pretty much fine the whole time we were there. He was a little whiny on the way home, but it was manageable.

It's nice to not have to plan our day around his nap. It's nice that we can do fun things, or even errands, whenever we want, without having to schedule in 2 hours for a nap. But those two hours...well, those two hours were my break. My chance to just veg on the couch, catch up on Gilmore Girls episodes, or a cheesy Hallmark movie, or read blogs. Sometimes it was even a chance to just run an errand by myself without feeling guilty for not taking the kid with me.

I will miss these naps, even though I will embrace the good parts of not having them anymore. Here a pic of the fun we had during nap time! I have no pics of baby E because he was napping the whole time in the Moby.

Today's lesson - It's funny to me that though I do not easily succumb to other's attempts to guilt trip me (pretty much never), I sure do give them to myself often enough! Mommy guilt is pervasive and often times ugly. It can prevent us from doing what is really best - what our momma intuition tells us to do - because we become so focused on what we *think* we should do. Fight it. And then let me know how?