What happened to naptime?

Cora had a big, busy weekend, so I expected that she'd be worn out and ready to take a nice nap after dinner.  I usually put her down between 12:30 and 1.  Once she goes to sleep, she usually doesn't wake up for a couple of hours.  Most days I lie down on our bed, which is a couple feet away from Cora's bed, and play on the IPad or read something on the Kindle while she sleeps.  Sometimes I actually take a little nap myself.

I really enjoy Cora's nap.  If you were a 70-year-old woman in charge of a nineteen-month-old child, believe me, you would need a little respite too.

Today I put her down at the usual time, but she just couldn't seem to settle down.  She squirmed, chattered, sat up and plopped back down, and worked on making the hole in the netting of the Pack-N-Play that serves as her bed even bigger than it already is.  Another month and she'll be able to crawl through that hole, at the rate she's going.

Many times I said, "Cora, lie down now.  Go night-night.  Shut your eyes."

After an hour of this and gaining no ground, I got a kitchen chair, put it beside her, and began singing and patting her tummy.  She rubbed her eyes a couple of times, and I figured she was ready to go to sleep.  And yet, every time I stopped singing, she would say "More" and make the sign language for "more" as she said it.

I sang many hymns.  The singing was really making me sleepy, but except for the fact that the child was now lying still, it wasn't having much effect on her.  At some point I decided to sing "You're a Grand Old Flag", one of the many songs my mom forced me to learn when she thought I was the next Shirley Temple.

  

I even ended up singing "Dear Hearts and Gentle People", which I sang for a program at my one-room schoolhouse as some of us rode our tricycles in a circle.



After forty-five minutes of forcing myself to sing one song after another, with Cora saying "More" if I so much as stopped for a breath, I gave up.  She had been in bed for almost two hours and was still as wide awake as ever.  When her dad came for her, I told him my sad story.  He couldn't believe it, since she had such a tiring weekend.  A couple of hours later he posted a picture to Facebook.

Sound asleep, and he said she was in bed for the night at 6:45.  I just hope she doesn't wake them up at 2 A.M. wanting the supper she slept through, and I do hope this business of not going to sleep at nap-time isn't setting a trend.