Lately, between two and three each afternoon, I'm so tired that all I can think about is stealing away and getting a short nap. I know this has something to do with pregnancy, so I try to give in to my desire for a nap.
Yesterday, when the magical time appeared, I asked Bianca if I could put in a movie and take a short nap. "No, I want to read books." I'm not one ever to say no to books (it seems like lately, everytime I ask if I can read to Bianca, she says no--she'd rather ride her bike or play Uno or anything other than read, so I take advantage of it when she says yes.) So, we sat in the recliner chair and started reading.
First, she picked "Tuff Fluff" (which I'm sure nobody's heard of but is about a stuffed duck who loses his brain, while a detective is trying to figure out where it's gone, all of this is happening at 3:29 a.m.). I read the whole thing and reclined the chair a bit to get a little more comfortable. Next, she picked "Good Night Gorilla" (when I saw the zookeeper's wife all nestled in her blankets in bed, I was eyeing her pillow jealously and my eyes seriously started drooping). Bianca then picked "Stellaluna" (which is about a bat who tries to fight against his natural bat urge to stay awake in the night and be more like the family of birds that raises him). Do you see a connection here? Because I certainly did. Every book Bianca picked made me more and more tired.
Finally, we came to the stapled together book that the reading teacher sent home from school on Monday, called "A Nap and a Map." Sure, I can understand it. Those are easy words to sound out. N-A-P, nap! Bianca loves to read it. But every picture in that book had a bear taking a nap in a pan or on a map. (I worry about rereading the book too many times as Bianca has a tendency to memorize very quickly, so I won't know if she's actually reading it or not.)
By the end of "A Nap and a Map," I finally convinced Bianca that it was time. Time to put a movie in and time for me to go lie down in my bed. And she went for it. She was even so good as to tell anyone who called on the phone that I couldn't be disturbed because I was napping.
It felt good. I needed the nap. And at the end of all that torturous reading, I would have been just as likely to fall asleep in a pan or on a map as in my bed.
