By now, I've established that the boys nap at school but they are ready to give up their naps. This leads to them being up way too late, which means they are very tired and cranky in the morning. Jon and I found a "perfect" solution to the problem - take them to pool after school to completely wipe them out.
The problem with this solution is we often walk home from the pool with two whiny cranky children who complain the entire way. They continue to be cranky until they go to bed. Lots of crying, lots of complaining, lots of bad behavior.
Jon and I have finally resigned ourselves to the idea that we will either have crankies from 6-8 if they don't nap or we go to the pool, or WE will be cranky from 7:30-9:30 as they play and go crazy in their room, and constantly test limits by coming out or fighting.
I'd rather deal with crankies on their time than crankies on my limited personal time. And again, once we expect the crankies, everything seems so much easier!
7 comments:
We are dealing with this, too - Finn doesn't nap on the weekends anymore (and, this past weekend aside, is usually OK/not too whiny), but he naps at school. And then has us listening to him goofing around and/or running up and down the stairs to his room to quiet him until nearly 9:00. I'm tempted to start bringing him to the pool after school, though M. usually isn't home yet and I don't know if I'm brave enough to do that with two kids yet (one of whom tries to drown herself in the water whenever she gets the chance). In case I brave it, though - question for you: When do you feed the boys dinner? Before you head to the pool, while you're at the pool (pack food), or after? Just looking to learn from your wisdom :-).
Many people are surprised to find out I gave up on naps a year ago. Why? Not worth the struggle at bed time. I'll take an hour or so of crankies each night if it means they go to bed at a decent hour. And I don't know what I'll do when our pool closes on Labor Day, because nothing wears out my girls like swimming.
Daycare naps suck. Plain and simple. Since Michael only goes twice a week, it completely hoses his schedule and by Friday morning he's a cranky beast. I wish we had a pool solution for those evenings, because swimming is the closest thing to parenting magic that I've found.
My mom took him to the pool for 4 hours yesterday. He was pleasantly exhausted and sweet as can be.
The thing about nighttime crankies is that eventually they go to bed. No matter how horrible N&P are after Nanny April leaves at 5 pm (or earlier) I can survive until they are in bed by 7 pm. Not sure I am looking forward to a later bedtime. Ned sometimes skips naps although he is too young to give them up and when he does he is in bed by 6 pm. Yup.
We have the crankies here too. It's usually the hour before dinner and right before Todd gets home. Once we get dinner, everyone is pleasant for a short time. I find the pool to be a good distraction but then there is so much to do when we get back!
I am so with you on that. I would rather have them cranky cranky cranky and sleep instead of bedtime, cranky, up, down, bed, me cranky.....
We are dealing with this exactly too ...I think I agree dealing with the crankies on their time is a win for early bed time ...
It's good to know we are not alone.
I get the crankies too when hubby doesn't come home till later ...on the days they don't nap leaving me with two whiny kids who belt each other and fight incessantly when not pestering me.
A long bath time helps a little but then dinner gets later.
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