On (not) Napping

When it comes to napping, I want to have my cake and eat it, too. That is...on days when we are out and about and having fun, I hate to curtail the activities and hurry home for Eden's nap. But on rainy days, or days when I've just had it, I love to have that 2-3 hour break in the day.

Anyway, I have been toying with the idea of seeing if Eden could do without her nap when it suits me, and I was bolstered by our experience last Saturday. The icing on the cake has been the nightly battle to get her to bed at a 'reasonable' hour. Come 9pm and she's still up most nights, which is getting tiresome for me. So anyway, the past two days, I simply have not planned for her to nap. Tuesday, we stayed at the beach all day and she did great, even though she was clearly sleepy for a bit in the afternoon. Yesterday, she fell asleep at 11:45 in the car on the way back from the spray park. I let her sleep in the driveway until 12:30 and then woke her and we headed to the beach. Again, she was sleepy, but she held her stuff together all afternoon (she did sit sleepily in my lap for a while and just stare at the ocean, which is very unlike her). Both nights, she went straight to bed at 7 and slept soundly all night long until her normal waking time, which was really nice.

It is funny how different every child is. Sadie had to forgo her naps when she started nursery school (age 3), and it was a very difficult adjustment, and she usually ended up either melting down completely or falling asleep at 5pm each day for months until she got used to it.

So, my takeaway(s) from this experiment is this:
--Eden can deal, pretty easily, with skipping her nap when it suits me.
--She is still obviously tired enough in the afternoon to nap on any given day.
--2-3 hour naps are probably too long anymore, unless I'm specifically planning for her to be up late that night.

She is with my mom today, and my mom has instructions to nap her for as long as she wants (my guess is she'll sleep 3 hours), since we're going to the fireworks tonight. I think (hope!) that by having her nap at least every couple of days, she won't fall out of the habit.