Nap Motivator

So, today I stumbled upon what appears to be a good motivation for Gabe to take a nap. Sadly, it's not one that I can use very often, but I'll take what I can get.

There is a car show of some sort in Newton today. This isn't surprising. The good people of this city will use pretty much any excuse to get their classic cars out to parade around town. Despite their frequency, however, we've not taken Gabe to a car show yet. Today that will probably change (I say "probably" because it is entirely up to Libby, since she's the one who thought it would be a fun idea--and now that I've promised it to Gabe, it will be her that dashes his dream, not me, which is a nice change as I'm usually the one who has to say "no" to whatever whim he fancies). As Gabe was finishing up his lunch a little while ago, I said, "And if you take a good nap, Momma is going to take you somewhere for a treat this afternoon."

"A treat?" he asked, his eyes lighting up. "For me?"

"Yep. A special treat."

"Is it candy?"

"No. She's taking you some place special."

"Is it a toy?"

"Nope. It's a surprise."

"Surprise? What's that?" He likes to ask that question even though he knows the answer, so I simply bypassed a real explanation since the concept of "surprise" is a bit on the nebulous side.

"It's some place special, but you won't know where it is until you get there."

"Is it candy?" Here we went into a rather lengthy back and forth while he made multiple guesses. I'll skip my responses, but I'll share his questions because some of them were pretty funny.

"Is it a toy? Is it pie? Is it ice cream? Is it candy? Is it a toy? Is it a robot? Is it a toilet? Is it candy?" I'm not sure how the robot and toilet work into his concept of "treat." Who knows how his brain works. It certainly is candy-centric, though, there's no denying that.

This guessing game was one of the funnier things we've done lately and I would have encouraged him to keep guessing for a few more minutes, but eventually ALL of his guesses were either "toy" or "candy," so we moved on.

"It's a surprise, but it won't happen until AFTER your nap, when Momma gets home."

"Oh," he said. And I went into the kitchen to rinse his lunch dish.

When I returned, he was looking for his blanket. "I need to take a nap now," he informed me. And so, at HIS prompting, we got his things around and tucked him in for a nap, thirty minutes earlier than normal. Now I just have to see if he'll take an actual nap or do one of his "quiet times" where he lies in bed for about thirty minutes then starts calling me up with declarations of "I sleeped!" I tried to emphasize that the condition of the treat shortly following the nap was that the nap needed to be a REAL nap, but I'm pretty sure all he was thinking about was candy and toys, so we'll just have to see how it all plays out.

And I'm going to have to start coming up with suitable bribes to get him to volunteer for naps more often, I think.