31 things to do during nap time

What are the best things to do during naptime? It occurred to me recently, that as my daughter is nearly two, she may be reaching the age where she drops her daytime nap. I don’t think we’re there yet – thank goodness – but the very idea filled me with horror. On borrowed time with the midday sleep session? Yikes.

I love nap time, possibly more than I love Bonus Time at Clinique. Nap time is nature’s way of letting parents take a natural break, to pause, breathe and refresh before it all starts again. It’s also, in a way, like time travel – a short glimpse into what life was like Before Children, when you had unlimited amounts of minutes and hours to do whatever you liked.

We didn’t get off to the best start, me and nap time. For a while my sleep-resisting daughter would only nap on me, and then never in her cot. Even the baby sleep geniuses at nursery couldn’t get her to sleep in a cot. But then we figured it out, she switched to a happy medium of a few hours in the middle of the day, it got really good, and we’ve been best buds for a while.

How long do they do it for? Please tell me we have ages yet. But to celebrate it while it lasts for us, here’s a list of suggestions for things to do during those blissful hours – or even minutes – when you’re at home and your child is asleep:

1. Run around silently shouting “YESSSS” and waving your empty hands. Even nearly two years in I get the urge to do this every single time
2. Take your own nap
3. Do something productive like work
4. Do something completely unproductive like lying down and doing nothing, just because you can
5. Make a cup of tea, let it cool to your optimum tea drinking temperature, then actually drink it
6. Microwave the cup of tea you made earlier that’s now cold
7. Check Twitter, Facebook, email, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram…and repeat
8. Gaze in wonder at your child if they’re napping on you, until your phone battery dies and you realise you’re hungry and too far away to reach the TV remote
9. Have a shower…
10. ….get dressed…
11. …put on make-up…
12. …and do your hair (or all four, depending on how quick you are)
13. Plan something spectacular for lunch; instead have something on toast, just toast, or hummus. Again
14. Depending on your partner being around, do that thing that resulted in your child in the first place
15. Write a blog post
16. Read some blog posts (here’s some of my favourites)
17. Pin some things
18. Check on your napping child, see they’re fine, check on them, see they’re fine (repeat to infinity)
19. Tackle the dreaded laundry basket
20. Or do something vaguely domestic like unloading the dishwasher. Maybe
21. Paint your nails; cross your newly beautified fingers that doing so hasn’t jinxed yourself into a one sleep cycle only session
22. Have a very small wine, if there’s any open (just the once, it would be rude not to, right?)
23. Read a book, or a magazine if you have no attention span any more *cough*
24. Do some online shopping – or that thing I do where I put loads of things in the basket then a) realise I shouldn’t really be spending money on things I don’t need or b) go to check Twitter and forget about it entirely
25. Realise you’ve been staring at the TV for 20 minutes and it’s still on Nick Jnr Peppa
26. Try and find something bad / good on TV
27. Come to the realisation, yet again, that daytime TV is terrible
28. So watch a Friends repeat, yet again, unless / especially if it’s the childbirth episodes where Phoebe coughs out triplets and Rachel gets a bit shiny
29. Make another cup of tea
30. Also, biscuits
31. Keep checking to see how long your baby has been asleep, and be quietly pleased when you hear signs that they’re stirring…well it has been ages, and you do really, really miss them.