Sleep with one Eye Open: Napping with a Toddler

I'm a mother of 2 boys. An almost 8 year  old and a 2 year old. You would think by now I would have some idea of what I'm doing. Wrong!
You would think that I would remember why one doesn't just fall asleep with a toddler in the house. (I should clarify that means don't fall asleep with a toddler who isn't asleep, let alone if you think you might fall asleep first check your surroundings to ensure there isn't anything your child can get into.) Now I would never intentionally leave anything dangerous laying around, that's not what I mean by something your child can get into, I mean things like crayons, markers, paint etc.
Let's take a journey back in time 6 years ago. I was dog tired, I had just worked midnights and came home and had to get my toddler ready to go to birthday party. (I would like to add that I didn't typically work night shift, my relief staff didn't show up and I was stuck at work) Anyways, off we go to the birthday party, we have food, cake, fun and head home. At this point I'm not sure how I was even functioning as a human being. The baby little to no sleep phase was a thing of the past, my body wasn't adjusted to this at all! So we go into the livingroom I put on a movie and lay on the couch so I can rest. I awoke a couple hours later and all looked well. My son had many of his toys out he seemed to be playing quietly and content. It wasn't a disaster, or so I thought, until I walked past a mirror... My 2 year old got a hold of markers from a craft we had done earlier on and coloured all over my face. Scribbles everywhere. The worst part they weren't crayola or washable. I now had toddler scribbles on my entire face that wasn't washing off. My husband had a good laugh when he got home. Lesson learned or so I thought...

Let's move to today. The weather has me all blah and my youngest who is 2 has decided that sleeping is for the dead and wakes up every night at 3 am like it's time to party. So I was a little drowsy, we put on a movie and were both sitting on the couch together. I clearly dozed off. I have an alarm on my phone to go off in the evening to remind me to start dinner or pull something out so even if I did doze off I would be good. Wrong Again! My darling 2 year old got a hold of my phone while mommy was snoozing. No alarms went off. He woke me up when the movie ended as he wanted to watch it again. I shot up like a jack in the box all "damn what time is it? how long have I been sleeping?" to see I had only snoozed for just over an hour. Phew I'm good. Except I'm not good, where is my phone? I know I put it on the end table. Oh there it is on the floor, maybe it got knocked off. Well I go to start prepping dinner and want to check the recipe to make sure I have everything. Well my alarm didn't go off because my son disabled it. He also changed my phone language to Spanish, changed my time zone, enabled GPS, blue tooth and just about anything else on the damn phone. Every game and app known to man was open. He was watching some video on YouTube in Russian. He also decided to decorate the Christmas tree which I had put up earlier in the day, with his toys. Lesson learned.
Toddlers are ninjas, they will get into everything and anything. I would recommend not sleeping if your toddler isn't asleep, or because it's real life and it's bound to happen from time to time sleep with one eye open.


~Mommy Dearest

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