The Farmer in the Dell

"Can you find the animal that makes this sound?"

Poor Wren has had a rough afternoon and so I'm more patient than usual with the talky-spinny-animal noises thing. Her "soothing sounds" white noise machine went insane in the middle of her much needed nap and scared the crap out of her with escalating terrifying alarm noises. I specifically steered clear of "terrifying alarm noises" when I was on that aisle in Target. When I put her in her crib, the machine was set on either "babbling brook" or "rainstorm." As far as we can tell, a little treble is the only difference. But an hour into nap time we got police raid+weird bird noises, in a sort of wave pattern, getting louder and louder. Wren was so upset and scared, and it's taken almost an hour to get her calmed down enough to venture outside my arm radius. She's comforted herself by (once again) pulling every damn thing out of my purse and scattering it on the floor. I take a stand at makeup, but I don't mind so much if she crumples stamps and bills and knitting patterns.

There really is nothing like the rage one feels at anything that wakes a sleeping baby. I remember this well from Wren's infancy, when a car alarm would go off, the neighbor's kids would bounce a ball off our window, Ramona would bark... I'm trying to think of ways to describe it but they all sound overwrought and hyperbolic, words like 'incandescent' come to mind. So it's just silly to talk about it. Suffice it to say, it makes me angry.

Partly, I guess, because naps are so important for both of us. For me, not to state the obvious, it's a nice break in the middle of the day. I get to fill it with a limited variety of activities at my discretion. Showers are possible, as is going to the bathroom by myself. I can read without having a book knocked out of my hand, or type without constantly defending the computer. I can walk into and out of rooms without a big ordeal and a lot of discussion about where I'm going and whether she'd like to walk with me and hold my hand or lie of the floor in a sobbing puddle. I can make something to eat without coming up with a way to entertain Wren in the kitchen and I can eat it without having to share or clean up a big mess or worry about not feeding Wren the right foods. (Speaking of, right now she's sitting next to me methodically eating the chocoalte chips out of a bag of trail mix. When she's finished with those, she'll start in on the dried cherries. She seperates them into piles as she works her way through the bag.) I can also watch Battlestar Gallactica without feeling guilty for exposing my child to the Cylon menace and all that violence and creepy ambient music.

And naps are important to Wren because, even though she sometimes doesn't think so "NO! MAMA NO!" she's very sleepy by naptime, and even if she doesn't spend the whole time sleeping (a lot of suspicious rustling indicates that she's repeatedly wrapping her various "babies" in their blankets to help them go to sleep) she wakes up all refreshed and ready to be her own sweet talkative, dancing, bizarrely kissy self.

The kissing of anything and everything is relatively new. She tried it out on her friend Finn yesterday with less than stellar results, but that won't stop her from going for seconds. In addition to the usual rotation of oft-kissed stuffed animals, she has also taken to kissing my feet and hands. Weird, but what are you gonna do?

Anyway, interrupted naptimes suck. And it takes us a while to rebound. So while I had plans to go to the arroyo this gorgeous afternoon, I'm not sure if we'll make it afterall. Today is one of Lazlo's long days, so it's me and Wren until an early bedtime. And hopefully tomorrow we can both take a nap.