Schoolin' Mommy

For awhile I have been gently encouraging Patricia, our nanny, to try to get Dashell down for two naps a day. He goes down at night much better when he has had two naps (even if they are both short) and it's supposed to be healthier. But, Patricia enjoys going to the park. Who can blame her? The park near us is lovely and Dashy and Patricia have a group of friends that they enjoy meeting up with daily. They always come home with wonderful stories of their adventures (and misadventures!) It is definitely the highlight of their day.

Unfortunately, many days, Dashy's first nap crosses the time they need to leave to go to park in order to hook up with everyone. So they take off. Sometimes Dash gets a few winks in the car (during the 10 minute ride to the park), sometimes not. He then wakes up and stays awake until the ride home much later in the afternoon.

When this happens, he naps until about 5pm and is then a bit of a bear to put to bed. So I've been trying to suggest to Patricia that he really does need two naps and that if he doesn't make it to the park because the nap gets in the way, maybe that's ok.

Every weekend I get him down for two naps. I thought it was because, if given a choice, he would just choose two naps. But after today, I'm thinking that maybe that's not quite it...

Last week we had Patricia stay late on Monday night, so she put him bed. He was coming off a weekend of two naps a day and Patricia did manage to put him down for two naps on Monday. So, for the first time she was able to see how blissful it is to put him down when he's had two naps. She was amazed! It was like a lightbulb went on. After that, she worked hard to get him down for two naps each day this week. It was fantastic. Every night he would gently nodded off to sleep. And then on Friday, he slept a total of 3 hours during his naps. I thought the weekend was going to be wonderful (and that I was going to be able to get a bunch of chores done during his, now blissfully long, naps.)

But Dashy had a whole other plan for today! This morning he went down for a brief 35 minute nap, which he fought all the way to the very first z. And this afternoon.... nothing. Nada. Zilch!

I tried and tried to comfort him to sleep. And you know what the little rascal was doing while I was giving it my best shot? He was pointing, over my shoulder, to the light switch. And then when I didn't turn on the lights, he decided I must not understand what the switch does. So to help his poor thickheaded mom out, he pointed to the overhead light. And when that didn't do the trick, he pointed again to the switch and then again to the light. This continued as he got more and more frustrated. (And we thought we were SO smart showing him how the light worked!) Eventually I realized that the nap was just not going to happen (I guess I really am a bit slow) so I turned up the lights.

An hour later I tried again. Same result. So I thought we'd read some books (that usually does trick) and try again. Well Dashy didn't want me reading the book. He wanted to read it himself. Or at least a page of it (and a page of something else, and a page of something else, and a page of something else!)
So for 45 minutes he pulled out every book he owns and went through one page of each of them and then went through them all again, and again, and again, and again! (You get the point.)

Alas, no nap. Maybe I shouldn't have (so strongly) suggested to Patricia that he needs two naps a day. Maybe I should have reserved the delicious double nap days for myself!

I think I will chalk this up to: lesson learned!