See-Saw Napping
It’s been an up-and-down napping week so far – thank you, mid-winter break! How many more days left of this, again?
Monday – Tad naps, Ane does not. Ane is all kinds of cranky by bedtime.
Tuesday – Ane naps, Tad (having slept in that morning) does not. We wear out the kids with an impromptu drop-in to Pump It Up’s jump night for kids on mid-winter break. Tad goes to bed immediately after having his bath. Ane burned off enough energy to fall asleep almost as quickly.
Wednesday – Tad naps (very, very late, thanks to a play date with Handy Mom and kids at the mall), Ane does not. Ane is cranky… AGAIN. I have her read aloud to me anyway, but she is incredibly grouchy about it. Bedtime is later to try and make Tad drop off less than an hour after going to bed (as opposed to Monday, where he went to bed at 9 but didn’t fall asleep until sometime around 11:30 pm) – and Ane is immediately out.
Today – I have a doctor’s appointment, so all bets are off. There may be power napping in the car, post-appointment, on the way home.
The kids really do still need naps. Ane, being six, should be outgrowing them… you’d think. We do compromise on “quiet time” – she plays quietly in her room and DOES NOT LEAVE IT (except to use the bathroom) until I give her the okay – but this is ONLY on days that we have nothing planned for the evening. She has an inner Oscar that comes out that I really don’t like exposing innocent people to if she doesn’t at least get a power nap in.
Tad, however, starts his school days so early that he really truly needs his nap to get through the day. It doesn’t always work that way, but more often than not, he will get a decent nap in. I’ve had to start waking him up around 4 pm, so he has half a chance of getting a decent night’s sleep. I can’t wait for the seasons to change and for there to be more light in the evening, because then he can play outdoors and burn off more energy before bedtime.
I wonder what Rerun will nap like. Ane was a regular napper as a baby – she got on to a 2-nap-a-day schedule early on and was so regular that I could set my clock by her. She even started sleeping through the night at 3 months. Tad was a cat napper – he loved to drop off, take 45 minutes, and then wake up and be happy for the next few hours before crashing again. He started sleeping through the night at 4 months, though, so I really didn’t have much to complain about. He didn’t start taking reliable, longer naps until he was around 9-10 months old, but only one a day. And I could get the kids to nap at the same time after lunch, which was marvelous.
But now I have a six-year-old kindergartener and a four-and-a-half-year-old monkey who catches the bus at 7:15 am, so who knows where Rerun is going to fall in the napping range. It would probably be too much to ask that he take a post-nap lunch with his siblings, huh?
Oh, well. At least when I put him down and leave him in one spot, he’ll still be there when I come back. Unless an overly-helpful sibling decides to move him. That would not be good.
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February 18th, 2010 07:59
Baby Cousin (who needs a new blog name), is a good napper and always has been. Two hours about noon to 2pm is average. If she’s sick it cane easily be four hours. But if her nap is cut short, stay out of her way and on her good side come evening.
Little Cousin gave up regular naps last Spring. Occasionally she’ll be so exhausted she’ll cuddle up on the couch (her preferred place to nap) and snooze. Of course, she has just crashed in the middle of Grandma and Gichan’s family room with Baby Cousin, Ane, Tad, and Rusty running around her.