1:00pm. My three year old son sits in a pink plastic lawn chair approximately 2.5 feet away from the television set. He is watching his Toy Story video again. This is at least the forty-second time he's seen the movie. He and his father can recite lines together, re-enacting pivotal scenes between Woody and Slinky Dog. I notice the time and wonder whether I should turn off the television and make him go for his nap or wait until the movie is over. It is already to the part where Buzz and Woody have escaped from Sid's house and are chasing down the moving van containing their beloved owner, Andy. The end is nigh. I decide to let him finish the movie.

1:03pm. He changes my mind. In a sudden burst of energy, as three year olds are wont to have, he leaps from his chair, runs over to the living room window (the same on his father tells him constantly not to mess with), pulls up the lock and pushes it open, letting in a gust of cold wind and light rain.

"Alright," I tell him. "Go sit on your potty." This is the mandatory phrase which translates into "it's time for your nap." I walk slowly over to the television, setting down my bright yellow copy of "Shakespeare for Dummies" on the floor and being careful not to loose my place. My hands search the old console TV for the off button (on the right, at the top) while I watch to be sure he does what he's been told.

"No!" he yells. He's prone to doing this right now. A phase, I guess. He is testing my authority.

"Yes," I say. "It's nappytime, so go sit on your potty and do pee-pee."

"But I already took a nap." A lie. But I, perhaps foolishly, think that he is too young to understand about lying, so I let it go.

"No, you didn't. Go pee-pee."

The purple and white miniature toilet sits off to the left side of the living room. He is much too tall for it, but would rather wet his pants than take the time to go all the way to the big potty, a full five feet or so around the corner and through the hallway. He can still see the television from his plastic throne and that is what's important to him. Even on viewing number 42, it important to watch the climactic U-Haul scene and make sure that Buzz and Woody get home safely. The cartoon movie characters are fascinating to him. He knows that they are real, but loves to "pretend" with them. The denial of television privileges is the worst punishment one can inflict upon him at this point, even though we have done the whole "we don't watch television because it rots your brain" thing and survived it. It only took a few months before the videos started popping back into the VCR and the PBS pledge drives were driving us crazy again.

He approaches the toilet backwards, whining at me the whole time while pulling up his brown Monterey Bay Aquarium sweatshirt and pulling down his baby-diarrhea-green Old Navy sweatpants. In one swift maneuver, he plops himself onto the potty, folding his long legs so that the knees almost touch his chest, and places the index finger of his right hand on his penis, pointing it down toward the lake of urine still sitting in the potty from earlier. I had been at school all morning and my husband, who is now in his oil painting class, tends to get lazy about emptying the potty promptly. Which is not to say that I am never guilty of the same faux-pas, just to say that I was not the guilty party this particular time. There has been conflict over this; and the dishes and the failure to properly and thoroughly wash hands and/or bathe consistently. Sometimes I feel like I have two preschoolers and it frightens me that I trust them to take care of each other while I work and go to school. But the conflicts remain very minor and will most likely never escalate. We are a very close little family and we love each other, quirks and all.

After the waterfall sound of liquid hitting liquid ends and the three shakes have been shook, he rises from the purple seat and begins the seemingly laborious process of pulling up his Hot Wheels underwear. This process, for a three year old, involves a lot of grunting and walking around in circles and inevitably ends with a twisted waistband and one butt cheek hanging out. On occasion, my son will choose to ask for help in replacing the misplaced butt cheek, but this time he elects to ignore the problem and pull his pants up over it.

1:07pm. I had already done some prepping on his bedroom by opening the pull-down shades on his window. When closed, these shades create darkness, which is the enemy of the three year old. At this point, he has resigned himself to going into the room and I have to rush to try to get in there before him. I don't make it. He jumps into the bed before I get a chance to place the pillows against the wall at the head of his red racecar bed and he smashes his knees into the spoiler. This will be another purple-brown bruise on his legs--he has so many that it looks like we kick him in the shins as punishment for whining (which, for your information, we do not, so put the phone down). He is undaunted by the injury and I have to push him with the pillow to get him out of the way.

"I want animal books," he tells me. Great. He's talking about those DK picture books that were really great at first and are now a source of great irritation. They are just pictures with labels. There is no story. Granted, they are useful in the teaching of reading and animal identification, but they make terrible bedtime stories.

"How about the Valentine's book?" I beg.

"No, animal books. Those two animal books." They are lying on the floor in front of the bookshelf, probably from the last time he looked at them.

"How about one animal book and the Valentine's book?"

"No Valentine's book."

"Well, I'm not reading two animal books. I will read one animal book and one other book. Do you want 'Valentine's Day' or 'I Like Winter'?"

"Valentine's Day." He struggles for power, but gives up much more easily than some children. Thank God.

As I read the books, he stands on the foot of the bed looking out the window and announcing, "It's raining in my wheelbarrow! It's raining in my wheelbarrow!" I read the animal book even though he isn't paying attention. It's important to me that he feels like I keep my word. I want to be a "good" mommy. After finishing the books, I throw the one large pink breakfast themed pillow, two Lion King throw pillows (a wedding gift), and one brown Aztec throw pillow on the ground and tell him to lie down. He wants to wear his Pooh slippers to bed and I let him, thinking in the back of my mind that it is a bad idea. I tried letting him sleep with a pillow last week and that resulted in his lying in bed alternately singing, whining and yelling until I came in to take the pillow out. I look at him lying on the "Star Wars" fitted sheet and place the light green Winnie-the-Pooh sheet over his waist and legs while kissing his cheek. None of the bedding matches today because bed wetting has been en vogue lately and half of everything is in the wash.

"Take a nap, okay? When you wake up we can watch 'Arthur' and cuddle and play 'Frogger' game and have fun. Okay?" I say.

"Okay." I doubt that he means it. I plug in his nightlight and pull down the shade.

1:32pm. In the time that it takes me to go to the bathroom and turn on my computer, he is already yelling for me.
"What?" I ask as I enter his room.

"Turn my music on." The music coming on from the alarm clock is the signal that he can wake up.

"No. You have to take a nap."

"Why?"

"So you can have fun when you wake up."

"Okay." I turn to leave, but he stops me. "But I need somebody to stay with me."

"No, you don't. Just go to sleep."

"I can't sleep in my room by myself. I need somebody to sit with me."

"How about if I sit in the inner sanctum?"

"Okay."

The inner sanctum is the term we use to refer to the room where my husband and I sleep. It used to be a bedroom, before my parents built the addition on to the house. It is now open on one side to the hallway that leads to my son's room and has two doors on the other side that lead to the kitchen and the other hallway. It isn't the ideal bedroom, but we sleep there because it is in the dead center of the house, the only room, besides our son's, that doesn't have a window facing a noisy and obnoxious neighbor's house. In fact, it has no window at all and remains pretty quiet, save for the humming of the appliance in the kitchen and the clicking on and off of the heater. Too many nights of staying up until 4am when the neighbor's finally turned off their mariachi music and went to bed convinced us that giving up the privacy of the bedroom for the silence of the inner sanctum was the way to go.

1:36pm. I sit in bed in the inner sanctum, the bed that my husband and I share, with the touch lamp on its medium setting, reading a textbook for class. I have slept better since we moved the bed into this room, not just because of the silence, but because there is no TV or radio and I usually don't read in here either. I don't even get dressed in here--there is no dresser, only two makeshift nightstands with nothing of any consequence on them. This room is used only for sleeping, love-making, early morning family cuddles and jumping on. It's got good vibes.

1:39pm. "Potty!" The word rang out through the entire house. He draws out the first and second syllables, allowing their respective vowel sounds to linger in the crisp air. I turn off the light, go to the living room to retrieve the mini-potty, and take it to his room. He is lying on top of the green sheet, which is all wadded up now and contains within its folds the sacred Winnie-the-Pooh slippers that he so wanted to sleep in. Barefooted, he exits the bed and approaches the toilet. He sits with his pants around his ankles, his right index finger on his penis and his left index finger up his left nostril. I wonder whether I should make him stop, but I find his patented booger pack-n-eat routine hilarious. He picks the booger, gives it a careful visual inspection, places it on his upper lip, just under the Cupid's bow, and proceeds to lick it off. It makes me laugh, but my husband says I shouldn't encourage him. He's right.

"I took a short nap and now I'm done, " he says.

"No," I say. "You didn't sleep at all. You're gonna have to go to sleep."

"Why?" Another beloved word of the three year old.

"Because if you don't take a nap, you can't have any fun later."

After the pants and underwear pulling up routine, I throw the slippers out of the bed and replace the green sheet.

"Good night. I love you. God bless you."

"God bless you too, mom."

1:43 m. I go to the living room to read some more, wondering if I am doing the right thing. Should I sit in there with him or will that make him too dependent? Should he still be taking a nap at three years old? I know my sister-in-law never gave her kids naps. Should I at least sit in the inner sanctum so that I am closer to him? I have to pee again. I decide not to flush because the old pipes in our house are loud and might scare him. But I cannot pass up hand washing and following it up with extra-dry skin lotion on my hands. I sit down in front of my computer and prepare to type my homework, still worrying about my mothering skills. My mom wouldn't have made me take the nap. She would've got me up and fed me ice cream. My gaze shifts from the windows screen to the shelf of parenting books on the wall. I don't want my kid to have a personality disorder. I don't want him to sleep in his parents' room when he's a teenager, like I did.

1:57 pm. I am quiet and I become aware of the silence. He is already asleep.