The other day Mrs. OccupationDad was trying to get Benjamin down for a nap. She read him a story and then had him lie down, staying with him. He was kind of antsy, wiggling around and talking. My wife told him that he should try to close his eyes and rest.
He responded by saying, "No, you have to get me to sleep like Dada does it."
"Oh," my wife answered calmly, "What does Dada do?"
Then my son slandered me, "He yells at me."
You will allow me to defend myself, yes? I do not yell at my son. If I did, I would have to be pretty dense to do it at naptime. I stay with Benjamin until he falls asleep. Most of the time he just lies quietly and eventually falls asleep; he such a good little guy. Sometimes he needs to snuggle or bury himself under a mountain of pillows or something. Sometimes I doze off before he does. Occasionally, he will be all restless and he'll be playing with something on the bed, while I'm there falling asleep. Whether my catnap is intentional or not, when Benjamin's flopping on the bed, or digging his feet into my side, I wake up and crankily whisper, "Please just try to lie still" or "I can't make you sleep, but it's not time to play." But even this crabby-Dada scenario is fairly rare.
Now back to the story. My wife knows I don't yell, so she asked our son, incredulously, "Dad yells at you?"
Benjamin lowered his voice; in fact, he whispered, "Yeah, … but he does it very, very quietly."
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1 comment:
That was pretty cute. We do the lie down thing, too. Our kids still sleep with us (most of the time) so it's just easier that way. My husband is much more efficient at getting them to sleep. The kids know he's not going to give in and read more stories and he's not going to lie there forever like I do. They play me because I'm a sucker.
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