With the exception of the two or three nights a month when our diminutive dictator decides to delight us with his eloquent and powerful speeches, Luki is really good about sleeping through the night. He takes his bath, eats some boob, and falls asleep in his crib, by himself, every evening.

Usually, he goes to bed at around 9:30pm or 10:00pm (I know it’s a little late for baby standards, but it’s not like he has big important meetings to get to in the morning. Plus, it gives Ton Ton and I plenty of time to hang out with him after we come home from work.) and gets up between 6:30am and 7:00am, has some more boob, and goes back to bed until 9:00am or so.

However, when it comes to daytime naps, his schedule is not predictable at all. As a matter of fact, the only thing that I know for sure about his napping habits is that they NEVER happen when it’s convenient to the structure of our day.

For example, if I make plans to meet my mother for a late lunch at 2pm, considering that Luki will probably take a nap after eating his own lunch at noon, my child will act like I laced his baby food with speed and spend those two hours wide awake, crawling all over the floor and climbing on every piece of furniture we own. Upon our arrival at the restaurant, he will proceed to fall asleep on the highchair, causing the waiter to become gravely concerned about his lack of neck support.

Mattresses are overrated. High chairs at Indian buffets are much more comfortable.

Over the weekend, we needed to go grocery shopping and waited in vain for Luki to take his nap before heading out. After a couple of hours, we decided to risk it and headed to Trader Joe’s with a wide awake son who, of course, fell into a deep slumber in the car. As I pulled him out of his car seat, he refused to open his eyes and, since we’d failed to bring his stroller, I had to make do with the resources we had on hand…

Yep, that’s my son sleeping in a shopping cart. And, even though when he’s at home, a mere sneeze two rooms away from his nursery is capable of waking him, his eyelids did not flutter once the entire time we were in the store.

As we were checking out, the older gentleman who rang up our groceries was only mildly amused when we asked what the price of the baby was.