dog food on the toilet paper roll

Miles loves his naps.

Our routine is as follows: I take him upstairs, push "play" on his amazon jungle monkey sound maker, sit in his glider with him on my lap facing out and read one or two of the five books that I read over and over and over. (I tend to choose books that rhyme and have more than three words per page. Those work best. The only side affect is that I have them fully and completely memorized and find myself chanting the words in my head way too often.)

It is extremely rare to get through both books. One of two things happens: 1) Miles falls asleep discretely on the last page of the first book or 2) He squirms and twists to be held with his head on my shoulder. If he ends up resting on my shoulder then it is important to get him cribbed quickly. He finds my shoulder comforting, but uncomfortable and would rather toss it out in bed.

Upon being placed in his crib (provided he isn't totally out already,) Miles lifts his head up, locates his glow worm, presses it so that it glows out a song and then lays back down. After the song ends he does it again. And...one more time. Then he is out.

I love our video monitor. Recently Miles has noticed the pinpoint green dot on his bookshelf that is the eye of the monitor. Its humorous to watch him stand in his crib and look at it intently. Its alien like, actually, with the contrast it gives his face.

Instead of panicking and rattling the crib with urgency like he used to, Miles either wakes from his nap practicing syllables for a few minutes or rises silently and alerts us of his status by playing crib music contentedly.

Miles woke up from his nap a little early today and gave a few yells. I debated going in his room, restarting his amazon music and tucking him in for another half an hour, but instead this is what his monitor revealed:

After fussing for a few minutes while laying down (an indicator that he isn't actually ready to be up from his nap,) Miles enlisted the help of his glow worm. After cycling through the four songs it plays he stood up, turned on his jungle monkey sounds and laid back down next to the glow worm. After a few minutes and apparently still feeling antsy, Miles sat up and gathered all his crib blankets. He methodically covered every inch of his feet and legs, but since he was partially sitting on his blanket he was unable to wrap himself to his satisfaction. At this realization he started talking to and biting at his blanket. This ended in him bunching them all up and then dog piling them. He added a few crib toys underneath his tummy for good measure. Again he tried to resume his nap. Eventually this failed as well. Miles rose, eyed the green eye of the monitor and waited for me. When I arrived, he pointed at all his things and told me what he had tried to do to nap longer for me. If I hadn't watched the whole spectacle play out on the monitor for those 30 minutes, I would never have fully appreciated his efforts.

Now I must go clean up the dog food, for the only way I found time to write this was by opening our closet and letting Miles play at will.