Crying at naptimes and landfill bemusement

One thing that hasn't been easy with Jenna recently has been napping. We all get along so much better when she has had a nap, and she gets really tired and whiney in the afternoon, but she hates it. She has never liked being away from the rest of the family, it must seem like she's being excluded from something and I'm sure she's up there imagining all the fun things we do without her. In reality we tend to nap too, but it must be hard to nap away from us and think of all the time Morgan is getting with just me.

If I let her nap down here she just doesn't these days, she comes out and starts distracting Morgan from my planned hour long feed-and-rest. Usually it has been a case of putting her upstairs and putting her back in bed any time I hear pottering. Sometimes she screams and then I will ask her to tell me what's wrong in words, which she either does or doesn't depending on tiredness. If she keeps screaming then I say I'll be back in a moment and walk away to see if she's just after prolonging things with an audience. By the time I get downstairs she's asleep. If I get to the bottom of the stairs and she's still making noise we go back up and keep trying to settle her. It is not fun.

This last couple of months there has been much less fuss and carry on. It hasn't prooved worth it, since if she wants to she can express what's really the matter and if there's nothing the matter then it seems that mummy is still going downstairs and isn't going relent and let her come down to play. The first day it felt like I was using controlled crying but it didn't take long to realise that since I'm listening to her, giving her chance to express her feelings about it, explaining to a sometimes rational three year old why she needs to rest, and never ever leaving her if she's actually crying, I'm just making sure we all get the break we need. I don't want to train her to go for a nap without a fuss, I want to show her that she can and that if she can't I'm always there.

Anyhows, self-justification of discipline asides, the last two weeks she has been saying, "I'm tired, I think it's time for my nap." And going upstairs to put herself in bed. At the least she has been saying, "oh OK then" when I tell her it's time to go. She is so grown up and aware of herself, she really does understand her own tiredness signals. Yay!

Morgan is a bit sick and yicky though, poor baby. Thank goodness she recovers so much faster than everyone else (thank goodness for breastmilk). She had some really runny and leaky nappies and I was clearing up after her a lot. Eventually I dug out a years-old disposable and put it on her. An hour later she leaked out of that too so we went back to cloth - but her first disposable nappy!

Something on that subject disturbed me today a great deal. I saw an advert for Pampers that was claiming that purchases of their products have accounted for a marvelous 28 million free vaccinations given to children in the third world! Mixed feelings on that asides, 28 million packs of nappies from ONE BRAND in the time that the promotion has been on - that can only be a couple of months. Each pack has more than ten nappies! How many nappies is that, just of that brand, in landfill? I can't begin to calculate it but I'd guess that's a lot. Once, for fun, I calculated the volume of used nappies Jenna would have used to date (she was only little). It would have filled my living room twice over. That's really no joking matter, once I think about it a little harder.