I have no idea where the beavers came from.

Nap time is hard.  How do you convince a toddler to stop having fun, lie down, hold still and be gnawed to death by beavers? Or whatever it is they think will happen if they stop moving for more than 13 consecutive seconds.  Seriously, I would pay actual money to take a nap, but it turns out that if I take a nap shit will go down.  There will be honest to god  beavers, and those assholes will dirty all your dishes and unfold your laundry.  Or at least that's the level of anxiety I feel when I try to indulge in an afternoon siesta.

I think I have figured out half the trick to getting the kids to take a nap.  You have to make sure they're tired before you try to get them to go to sleep.  That sounds obvious, but these kids are like Labrador puppies, who need, like, two hours of fetch to wear them out.  Really, we have a new game at the park, I pick something far away and tell Will to run to it and then run back.  And he will do this for half an hour, easy.  What is that?  If someone asked me to run 30 yards and then run back and there wasn't an ice cream sandwich waiting for me when I got back there is no chance I would turn around and do it again.  None.  (Spoiler alert: there will be a post discussing my struggle with exercise.)

So the first step is to start early inducing exhaustion, check.  It's the part right after lunch that boggles me.  Cajoling doesn't work.  You can coo in your best princess voice for three hours straight about the merits of getting in bed and going night-night and you will have zero sleeping people.  And brute force was kind of a failure.  "So help me God, if you get out of that nap bed again I will E
ND YOU."  First of all , no one believes me; and second, that's not the parenting theme we're aiming for.  Though, truthfully, I find myself there much more often then I would like.

Tomorrow we're going on a field trip, so there will be a car nap; but maybe Friday we will try a new pre-nap ritual.  Same idea as bedtime routine, but shortened for nap.  I'm thinking lullabies on Pandora during lunch, a book together, and then tuck-in cuddles.  It's worth a try.

If this doesn't work I'm just going to build a baby kennel with a lid and toss them in everyday between the hours of 12:15 and 3:00 p.m.  It will be like a toddler cage match.  Maybe I can rig it up in the living room next to the couch and take my own nap nearby.  The sound of siblings "sharing" for three hours would scare away any unwanted semi-aquatic rodent.