Tuesday, December 21, 2010

The great drop-nap experiment

Remember last week when I said we were trying to drop the nap? It was so glorious for the first few days. Olivia trudged through the last half of every day, sort of kind of somewhat compliant and mostly just too tired to fight me, and then she'd immediately drop off to sleep at an unheard-of 7:30 p.m. bedtime and sleep a solid twelve hours. Awesome, right?

Well, yes and no. On Sunday, she was so exhausted that she fell asleep on the way home from Church, and there was no waking the kid. She was OUT. So we let her nap for 90 minutes and woke her up. She was more mischievous toward the end of the day than she had been in her previous few nap-deprived days. And it took about 25 minutes for her to fall asleep that night. But she didn't fight bedtime as hard and she was asleep by 8:30 (as opposed to the more normal nap-day bedtime of 10:00). Then yesterday she melted down about a billion times and kept injuring herself, so she bought herself another nap. Yesterday afternoon was better, and bedtime was pretty much like Sunday.

Today we are back to no nap. The kids are all here, so that means no nap for the three older ones. It's been a long afternoon. A lot of defiance from Olivia. But manageable. So I don't know. All I know is I can count on an easy bedtime. And that's what gets me through, friends.

I'm thinking this is just another of those really awful transitions that you just have to live through with little kids. We haven't had one in so long that it seems more painful. I mean, the transition from two naps to one was hard. And that was more than half her life ago. So, we're a little out of practice with transitions here.

Next up...drop the pacifier. Yes. She still uses it for sleep. Get off my back. If YOU lived with this kid, you would be holding onto anything and everything that might possibly get her to calm down too. I decided a long time ago that surrendering the beloved paci would be darned near impossible until we dropped the nap and got her so exhausted that she'd fall asleep without the dang thing. So, yeah. It's on the agenda. I'm thinking after the Christmas craziness is over.

1 comment:

Stephanie said...

I think it is one of those hard transitions - Asher did really well with it, but most kids don't. And most of the kids I know need 1-2 naps a week for a long time ... good luck.

If it makes you feel any better, Asher had his paci until just before his third birthday, too. And I actually think it was easier to drop because we waited - I wouldn't worry about it. One thing at a time.