The Naptime Flunkie

"I didn't know it was for a grade..."

My son attends the school of baby life and this semester he's got two major subjects: eating and napping. It's considered a full course load. He's also heavily involved in his extracurricular activity. smiling. Since he's rapidly closing in on the three month mark, it was time for a little progress report. Here's how things went down...

Smiling: Great! (not that it matters...)
Like most kids, it looks like Ty's strongest subject is the one that won't make it onto his transcript. Who among us didn't thrive in our after-school functions? Smiling definitely contributes to making him a well-rounded and extremely endearing baby, but let's be real; it's not pushing him into the next developmental bracket, which is, of course, the obvious conscious pursuit of every wise baby. Everyone knows that babies are born with a heightened Must-Be-First-To-Roll-Over reflex. It's right up there with rooting.

Good job, buddy, but maybe we should direct our attention to your school subjects.

Eating: Meh
It's been a while since I was in school. What would "meh" be? C? B-, maybe? Let's just say that while he is eating (one look at that adorable round head will tell you that), there's some room for improvement. He tends to be distracted by the wall, pillow, smiling, daddy opening the door, daddy not opening the door, smiling, sneezing, daddy blowing his nose (ok, who wouldn't that distract?), smiling, falling asleep, crying, smiling, flailing arms, tickling mommy's side, and smiling. Some days it's a battle to get him to focus on the task at hand. Days like this I resort to pinning his arms to his sides and covering his eyes in the hopes that he'll redirect all that energy to his mouth.

There's hope for you, honey. Just keep a'going and good things will come, I promise.

Napping: F, F, F!
Uh-oh. Looks like someone failed a subject, and we all know what that means: retaking the course. Luckily, he has a good three years at least to master it. At the rate he's going, he'll need every practice nap he can get. I would look into getting him a certified nap tutor, but turns out that's not a thing. Naptime summer school? No openings. Is there a magazine for parents of the nap-challenged offering time-tested advice and activities to do while the baby doesn't nap?

But really, now that I look at the grade, F might be a tad harsh. He did deliver a handful of times, and he wasn't always showing up late...so I'm open to discussing the possibility of making it a D.

Sometimes I let his failure to apply himself stress me out but I guess at the end of the day (or semester) he's just a bad napper who has the occasional good day. That's just who he is. Sure it'd be nice to have one of those extra-sleepy varieties, but super-smiler's not bad, even if it's not offered for credit. If one of those big gummy grins can make me laugh and forget just how rotten of a napper he is, it's obviously worth all of his non-academic effort :)

"This works like a charm...gets her every time."