Napping Outdoors

Babies and young children often sleep outdoors in Norway and other Scandinavian Countries.

Yesterday my two year old boys just wouldn’t go to sleep. They were doing silly things that would set one another off giggling. They wanted to sleep. I could see that their behavior was a call and yet everytime we had tried to settle they got stirred up. So I took them out on a stroller ride. Perhaps because it had been a long rainy winter or perhaps because the boys have gotten heavier and harder to push I had forgotten the calming effect strollering can have on both the boys and on me.

It was midday and school was just getting out so there were a lot of people on the streets: middle schoolers, a teacher walking to catch a bus, and parents picking up younger students. Because I used to work at the local school I had three conversations within the first six blocks. It felt good to connect and the boys with their eyes slightly glazed over with sleepiness just took things in.

The rest of the walk we didn’t talk much but we did:

Hear urban landscape noises: birds and motorized edgers

Sniff the scent of a jasmine plant

Notice a fence made out of branches and wire and lots of flowering trees

Three dogs

And finally after a little over a mile walk in the stroller, the boys fell asleep. I walked them the mile back home and planted the stroller in the yard while I weeded the garden. It felt good. Even though one of the boys woke up a bit earlier than he would usually...as he heard his mom talking to the neighbor about housing for mason bees…he woke up with a dreamy peaceful composure and came and helped mom make a blazing yellows ‘fire” by putting dandelions in a pile.