Forgetting to sleep?

I don’t understand what it is that these kids have against going to bed at night! Though setting a sleep routine for Abhay has always been a challenge, it has now become next to impossible! Ever since Dassera vacations have begun, my son has turned nocturnal with his energy levels peaking at night just when my tolerance level is at an all time low!  Most moms would agree that there are days when all you want to do is to hit the bed and by sheer co incidence or otherwise, that’s the last thing your little one wants to do! Well…..when what you wish for them to do is what they wish to avoid and what you wish they avoid is what they are hell-bent on doing  – that’s what parenting is all about! :-)

Anyway, with vacations at its fag end , I was keen on getting Abhay to bed on time in preparation for school all set to reopen in the next couple of days. To my delight, I found a book apt for my setting written by a mom just like me in an attempt to get her little one to bed! “I’m so sleepy” by Radhika Chadha and pictures by Priya Kuriyan, a book in the Baby Bahadur series. This is a story of a baby elephant named Bahadur who has, like my baby, forgotten how to sleep! So one night when his amma had gone visiting  a relative, he felt sleepy but just couldn’t remember how to sleep! He decided to seek help from his friends and first approached Shanmugam, the lion, who was in a deep slumber. As he tried to wake him up, he was told by a monkey that lions are known to sleep all day and wake up at night. Bahadur then turned to his monkey friend, Manu who asked him to climb up the tree to sleep next to him when the little elephant knew better than sleeping on a tree! So he moved on and came across Ritu, the rabbit who invited the sleepy Bahadur into her little hole to retire for the day. But Bahadur was sure that let alone his whole self, not even his trunk could fit into the hole! He was convinced that elephants hardly sleep in burrows and called on his other friends from Chandu the crocodile, to Paytu the pig, to Kamalnayan the camel and Hutoxi the horse, all in a quest for a good night’s sleep. When he sees Hutoxi, the horse sleeping standing up, Bahadur has a brain-flash and finds a tree nearby to fall fast asleep leaning against it, like all elephants do! Abhay liked this book for sure, but I loved this book not only for its charming storyline but also its interesting animal characters with even more interesting alliterating names  -  I mean….have you ever come across a camel named Kamalnayan? Abhay  remembered his dear friend Ritu from Portland days when he read about Ritu, the rabbit!  This book can also serve as a good memory game for your little one, which, of course you wouldn’t want to try out at bedtime, lest they too forget to sleep! :-)