The Great "One Nap" Experiment

Well, it lasted all of two days.  But I had high hopes.

You see, for months Nathan was sleeping like clockwork.  He would sleep from 7pm to 7am, then take his first nap at 9am and his second nap between 1 and 2 pm, both of which would usually last an hour a piece.

And then back in September we started having trouble with going to sleep at night without us in the room.  And then he got sick and was up at all hours during the night and early in the morning.  And then he got sick again and was up at night again.  And then the time changed which threw us all off our schedules.  And then we tried going to church on Wednesday nights which gets Nathan to bed 1.5 hours after his normal bedtime, resulting in lots of early morning wakeups (for some reason, instead of sleeping in after a late night, Nathan likes to get up even earlier then usual!).  And then Nathan decides to not go to sleep at night and/or that he likes really early morning wakings for no discernible reason at all.  And then... and then...  So basically for the last 3ish months I can never predict how our nights are going to go.  And as the (slightly excessive) planner that I am, it really irks me to not know what to expect.

To apply logic to the situation (which I know is probably a mistake!) the only thing I haven't tried yet is to transition him to one nap.  He will sporadically have one nap days, usually due to Sunday morning church or Thursday morning bible study, but overall he is still a two nap kid.  But my thinking is that if he only has one nap during the days, he'll make up for the lost sleep during the night and go back to glorious the 7pm/7am sleeping habit.

I started out the experiment on Monday.  Brian, unexpectedly, was awake for the day after a night of call, so we went to buy a Christmas tree during our normal morning nap time.  The rest of the morning remained pretty entertaining with setting up the Christmas tree, then Nathan took a good 1.5 hour-ish nap after lunch.  He went to bed great that night, but unfortunately was up at 6am yesterday morning.  After I let him talk to himself a little to see if he would fall back asleep, I went in to try and rock him back to sleep.  After rocking with me a few minutes, he sat up purposefully and pointed to the noise machine (meaning: turn off the sleep-time noise) then pointed to the bookcase (meaning: read me a book) and then the light switch and the window (meaning: turn on the lights and open up the window shade, its time to get up!).

On Tuesday's there's a "Movement and Music" class offered at the public library (similar to Kindermusic except that its free!), so Nathan and I headed there from 11-11:45.  On the way home, Nathan was trying his hardest to fall asleep in the car, while I was doing everything I could to keep him awake.  Once home, I quickly fed him some lunch, but as he was finishing he started to fall asleep in his high chair!  I whisked him off for a nap, from which he woke up after 80 minutes, so I rocked him for another 40 minutes.  Last night he was so tired, but it took him forever (and me coming in multiple times and rocking him twice) to fall asleep, and then he was up early again this morning.  At 9am he started getting really fussy and I decided to put us both out of our misery and put him down for a nap.  He went right to sleep, and thus the end of the "one nap" experiment (for now)!

PS. Nathan just woke up talking to himself, which means he's in a great mood from his nap!  I even heard a few "dickles" from him!