Quiet Time.
I don't know why it took me this long to discover it, but I'm glad it didn't take me longer.
Like most great inventions, Quiet Time sprang from necessity. I find myself exhausted around 3:00 PM and absolutely NEED to rest. My mother-in-law says that I need glasses. My friend Penny says I need a nap. Naps are cheaper. I chose naps.
So, I decided that it was time for me to schedule an afternoon nap. This might sound simple for some people, but somehow, in my family, naps elude me.
Yes, I have to admit, there was a time that I had an aversion to napping, and I'm not just talking about when I was five and my mom would hang heavy blankets over the windows to block out any hope of natural light finding its way through. This fake night would not work for me, and I would lay there fighting against its insincerity.
That may have been the start of my aversion to naps, but even as an adult, I've been prejudiced against nappers. My philosophy has always been "What?? Take a nap? Do you have any IDEA what I could be missing???" And anyone who naps in my presence must not realize the value of my time. Who in their right mind would nap instead of partaking in my witty conversation and unending sea of knowledge, not to mention my sweet personality and deep brown eyes?
The answer, of course, is my husband.
For the first year that we were married, I think we argued more about sleeping that anything else. I could wager that we argued more about sleeping that any couple on the face of the earth...argues...about anything. He would come home from a long day at work carrying houses for other people, smelling like a hamster, and the first thing he'd want to do was to crash on the floor, dead asleep. This only further instilled in me the prejudice that nappers are losers.
And then I had a child. Naps certainly became necessary. But for them, not me. I still had too much to do, in spite of my mother-in-law's advice to "sleep when the baby sleeps." Give me abreak! Can you see my pile of laundry? Or the list of phone calls I have to make? Or the stack of bills on my kitchen table? Let the kid nap! I'm gonna seize the moment!
Yet with each child came a greater possibility that naps weren't such a bad idea. Still, I harbored this prejudice. Actually, I didn't even realize that I had such a prejudice, until I read Change Your Life Without Getting Out of Bed by Sark. It was then that I realized how important sleep was. It was then that I realized that I have a prejudice against napping. It was then that I laid off my husband about his napping. But I didn't take to cuddling up for a noontime siesta myself.
And then I turned 35.
I don't know if that's what did it, or if it was the comfort of a new house and the contentment that came along with it, or if it's just, very simply, exhaustion, but I finally decided that it was time to break down and become...
A lot of it, too, had to do with Penny's advice. She insisted that it was very important for me to nap. And I could take this advice from Penny, because she's one of the coolest people I know.
But how to get the kids to fall for this whole napping thing?
Ironically, most of my kids are too old for naps (what does that say about me?) so the only Nappers in the house are the baby and I. The other four actually need something to do to occupy their time while I nap, and so I created The Quiet Time Box.
The Quiet Time Box started out as a small basket with some coloring books and a box of Magnetix and a couple of other small things that could ONLY be played with during Quiet Time. It outgrew that basket and overflowed into a storage box when I discovered the wonder of the toy aisle at The Dollar Store. And now, since it houses Bionicles, Magnetix, two sets of giant playing cards, various coloring books and Mad Libs, a magnetic dartboard (and each child has a nail on the back of his door), The Dollar Store equivalent of My Pretty Pony, Mega Blox knights, play dough, small craft kits, and whatever else I can find that doesn't cost more than $5 and preferably costs $1 or less.
Normally, during quiet time, I can let each child choose three things from The Quiet Time Box, I set the alarm for an hour or an hour and a half, depending on my level of exhaustion, I turn off the phone, and send each of the kids to their own room.
The Rules:
No Trading.
Your door must stay closed.
No leaving your room, except to go to the bathroom.
No yelling to each other through the closed doors.
No asking when quiet time will be over.
The last one doesn't seem to be an issue most times. Actually, what usually happens is that I announce that Quiet Time is over, and it takes each child ten minutes or more to "finish" their Quiet Time.
The rules for myself are:
No doing laundry or other housecleaning.
No telephone calls or bills.
No e-mail.
TAKE A NAP.
Of course, as you can see, I have this weakness for Blogging, so while I'm not actually breaking a rule, I'm not napping, either.
I guess I haven't overcome that prejudice completely. ;-)
