This is Cate

Without warning, Cate decided last summer that napping was just not her thing. Without warning, she just stopped, unsuspecting of the joy that predictable three hour window brought her mother each day. It was the three hour window that let me write for the local newspaper. It was the three hour window that let me run out and do a few errands or schedule an appointment on the days that Steve was working from home. It was the three hour window that let me prep for dinner, put away the laundry, catch up on my email, and occasionally even sit down with a cup of tea and a book.

But she stopped.

I have tried to keep the routine alive - tucking her in with a bag of raisins and a few books. It worked like a charm for about one day. After that, the tucking in was quickly followed by the sound of feet stomping around upstairs as she moved from room to room, stopping to spy on me from the heating grate that looks from the upstairs hallway into the kitchen below. So I tried another approach. I told her she didn't have to nap if she would lay on the couch and watch Sesame Street, not moving from beneath the covers until it was over.

It worked for a day. Then came demands... not Sesame Street, Curious George. No, no, I said, trying to maintain some control. And so we went back to resting quietly in the bedroom.

Gradually, things went from not so great to worse. After an hour of foot stomping silence from the upstairs, I would discover everything from my nightstand scattered about my bed or Alex's rock collection spilled on the floor. The hour had become a chance for uninhibited exploration.

Yesterday, it reached its peak when Cate emerged from her "nap" decorated with war paint.

"It's just cream for my face," she insisted as I examined the muddled browns and beiges and cranberries of eye shadow gone wrong, smeared, not on her eyes, but across her cheeks in a dark, bruised-looking earthtone rainbow. She carried the look well when we went out to play in the leaves and she strode across the yard, hair covered in brittle leaves, a giant stick in her hand.

But when I went to tuck her in for bed, I discovered the toilet jammed full of paper. The plunger didn't do the trick and while I will spare the gruesome details, suffice it to say that underneath the wads of paper, I discovered the cardboard roll. In my bedroom, I found a mountain of cotton balls and the remains of the eyesh adow, now deeply gouged and beyond repair.

So we had a chat. You must stay in your room, I said. She could not, she insisted, promise that she would stay in her room. And so enacted Plan III. "You must stay on the couch, no TV, under a blanket for one hour."

"Books?" she asked.

"You can have books."

"Raisins?"

"You can have raisins. But no talking and no getting up until I say you can."

A deal had been made. She went dutifully to the couch with a small box of raisins and a pile of new library books. All fell silent in the house. No feet pattered across the floor. No small voice rang out. I applauded my own ingenious victory.

And then I smelled it.

I walked quickly into the room. Cate's face flashed the undeniable look of one caught in the act as her hands flew under the blanket.

Ten nails and the surrounding fingertips, freshly painted (to her credit, not a drop on the furniture). The small, sparkly, "Hello Kitty" nailpolsih hidden beneath the blankets folds.

"I tried to sleep, but my nails weren't pretty."

And really, there just is no answer for that - just some womanly advice about the dangers of freshly painted nails and fuzzy blankets.