Avery has decided that he is not going to nap anymore.
He is also not going potty, not eating, not participating in swimming lessons or pretty much anything else that we ask him to do.
Avery is 3.
So yesterday after an hour an a half in his room, lights out, curtains drawn; I had had one too many donkey kicks, pokes to the eye, rolly polly body checks and I just gave up. I told Avery that if he did not want to take a nap he would have to come to the grocery store with me. This, in my mind, was punishment, to him, just a way to get out of his nap.
The trip to the store was fine and afterwards he even played with his daddy outside for an hour or so. At dinner he decided he would rather not eat and then during his bath that decided he did not want to get out of the bath tub, ever, I guess. By this point it was 7 o'clock and he had been up for 13 hours. The meltdown began when I told him he that he could not put his can-taur (the 50 cent toy guitar we picked up at a garage sale earlier that day) in the bath tub. After all, its a fine musical instrument and we would not want it to get ruined. So, he in turn decided hedid not want to put his diaper or pajamas on and the screaming began. After a wrestling match to get his pajamas on, I took him to his room to read books and get ready for bed. As I was selecting books from his book shelf he hurled a hard cover library book at me and hit me in the back of the head. Kevin picked him up by his pajamas and set him in the time out chair. All the while he was screaming and crying and then baby Jake woke up crying.
At that point, I escaped to the nursery to rock Baby Jake back to sleep. As I was holding our sweet baby I could hear Kevin in the other room trying to reason our hysterical, delerious, way over tired three year old. I stayed in there with Jake probably longer than I needed to. I just held him and rocked him trying to soak up every little bit of baby sweetness that I could.
Everyone warned me that three is worse than two, and now I now its true.
Last weekend we went to the bike store to pick out a new bike for Avery's birthday. He also got fitted for a new helmet which he decided to wear all afternoon, including while we were making cookies.
