Uh-Oh.

This is how I found Janelle at 5:13pm. Sound asleep. Not because I told her to go to bed, but by her own free will.

I knew she was tired when I picked her up from preschool this afternoon and she started whining, then crying, then yelling at me after I asked her how school was all in the 5 minutes it took to get home. Janelle RARELY takes naps anymore, but I knew today she had to take one if I was going to survive the afternoon with her. Of course the second I tell her to take a nap, she lays down for 2 seconds and then out come the books which she will read and play with for up to two hours when I finally go in her room and tell her she can come out. That is exactly what happened today. After about an hour I gave up and told her she could watch a movie for the rest of quiet time. After her movie she played quietly for a little while and then I told her she needed to practice the piano.

Now usually she loves playing the piano. But not today. After one song that she played nearly perfectly three times in a row she was in tears because she wasn't "keeping the beat" (even though for a 5-year-old she was actually doing pretty well...talk about perfectionism!). So after two attempts to help her and her screaming at me both times I told her she needed to go take a time out for five minutes on her bed.

(I'd just like to take this moment and pat myself on the back because I had been extremely patient all day long. It's not like I had been yelling at her during her moments of despair. She was just genuinely in a bad mood from being so tired.)

Of course in the hustle and bustle of dinner time, I completely forgot about her for about 15 minutes because I forgot to set the timer. I finally realized that I was only dealing with one "It's-dinner-time-so-I'm-obligated-to-be-whiny" child, so I went to check on Janelle and found her fast asleep. Oh brother. That "I told you so" popped in my head, but I didn't say it to her. I just gently woke her up and asked her if she wanted to eat dinner before she went back to bed. She groggily agreed.

Now it's 7:25 pm. She just got out of the bath tub and is dancing around her room in her underwear singing like Hannah Montana. That 10 or 15 minutes of down time probably is going to mean she won't go to sleep until 9 now. Oh well. The Hannah Montana show is actually pretty entertaining!