Our three year old has introduced a new “opportunity” at dinner time. It’s a challenge we look forward to right up until we toss bowls of stir-fry in the air in an offering to the family dinner-time Gods to please save us from this horse-shit disaster we call 5:00pm.

We decided Chloe was going to give up napping this summer.

I can’t for the life of me figure out what gave us the right to decide when this wee nap-loving creature gave up something she looked so forward to. It might have been all of the people shouting at us and throwing rocks when we passed, “Well she can’t nap when she’s at school!”

So we gave it up. (because of the rocks)

Chloe didn’t have a say in whether she was going to give up her nap and I’m fairly certain if there had been a secret ballot, her vote would be scribbled in purple cap-less marker (her favourite) directly over top of the box indicating, “NOT interested in giving up my nap.”

As a result, Chloe energetically makes it through until 4:30pm in the afternoon without napping and then crashes into furniture, stairs, appliances or whatever is in her way en route to softness because her eyes are closed and she’s sound asleep.

When we do attempt to wake her, the idea of eating a meal is not exactly top of mind.

She is delirious (as you are when you’ve gone from playing outside in the sun all day to blindly wading through toys and books in search of a pillowy place to fall, to chop! chop! everybody! Time to strap on the feed bag!)

Yet we haven’t learned from our mistake and run into the same argument when we want her to eat (again, our choice in when we eat dinner and it’s going as well as our choice to relieve her of her beloved nap).

Chloe’s refusal to eat has become frustrating for lack of a better term.

Her reasons not to eat include any or all of the following and will continue from now until the end of time.

1. Temporary blindness

2. I hate that food.

3. I want a treat.

4. My fork is too squinky.

5. Daddy is looking at me. (How can she tell, she’s blind?)

6. The chicken tastes like bird poop.

7. I said I wanted bird poop.

8. I had a dream about an alligator.

9. I need to floss my teeth.

And my favourite

10. I want a nap.