Don't Wake The Sleeping Toddler

Don't Wake The Sleeping Toddler

Thursday 20 January 2011

I'm going to show you a photo that will make you go “aaaaah” and possibly even wrinkle your nose ...

Told you

This was lunchtime yesterday when Alfie fell asleep in this high chair after eating a load of baked beans.

In my defence I want to say that Alfie has had a cold recently, and is possibly also teething (yet again) and so is just pretty much a snot-sneeze of a child at the moment. We don’t make him stay up all night sewing wallets or anything. That would be stupid, he would eat the needles.

I only found out about this little episode later on in the afternoon when my husband told me over the phone. He said something else too, which took a while to sink in. He said “and then I put him in the buggy to go up to the post office but he woke up”.

.... but then he woke up ... think brain think .... come on work it out .... HOLYSHITYOUMOVEDHIMANDHEWOKEUP?!?!?!?!

History tells me that I should have started scouting for a doorway or park bench on which to spend the night at this point because the second law of Alfie, right behind the one stating that Alfie doesn't share food, is that Alfie doesn't appreciate being woken up. That’s the polite version. The proper version involves language that would make your face explode, and he can’t even talk yet. That is how much the kid hates being woken up.

So by the time I walked in from work, the inevitable had happened and Alfie was in total meltdown. I'm being serious here, it was SCARY.

Not only was he bright red and raging the house down, he was so full of cross, it actually pushed out vital information from his brain. Like how to breathe. I had to resort to blowing sharply in his face to make him gasp before he passed out from lack of oxygen. He was like the baby on The Incredibles when Syndrome tries to carry him off. Except actually I would have willingly jumped into the jet engine.

By the time we had sat down to dinner the rage had all but blown itself out and Alfie had admitted that he was in fact a little sleepy. A decision he reached by chuntering with his eyes closed for 5 minutes before face planting onto a spoon of soup and falling sound asleep at the table. Again.

Needless to say it was the easiest bedtime I’ve had in a while.