Nap boycott
Currently Katherine is on a nap boycott. She is at the age where most kids move from 2 naps to 1. She has only been taking 1 nap for a few months now. She seems to think it is time to stop taking a nap altogether.
It started Wednesday when we had a busy day. She went to Sammy’s house for the morning. I took her home and fed har and tried to get her down before I was going to babysit Hannah. Katherine said “NO WAY”. She totally refused to nap. That night my college roommate came in town with her two kids and Katherine was so excited that she would not sleep. At least she went to bed early though she did not sleep that well.
On Thursday we went with our friends to the Wiggles Play Center in Frisco. We grabbed lunch and went to our other college roommate’s house specifically so Katherine could nap. She would not. We left her in the pack and play crying on and off for about an hour. When I finally got her out, she was in the happiest, most playful mood. So we went to IKEA. She had a blast playing with the toys. At 4, she had a TOTAL MELTDOWN! I have never seen her so out of sorts. She all of a sudden was desperate to nurse but I had not brought in my cover and there was no good place. IKEA is a place where you get trapped. We were ready to check out but Katherine was such a pill that my friend offered to pay for it and meet me in the snack area so I could take Katherine and nurse her in the lounge. She was so squirmy and screaming so much that I did not think I could make it there without dropping her. Finally, I got to the lounge and nursed her to sleep, yet every time I would try to get up to leave she would start screaming. I was so frustrated. We left and I thought for sure she would fall asleep on the 45 minute drive home. NOPE! She was totally happy but 4 year old Helene fell asleep for over an hour. We did finally get her to bed at 6:45 (and she missed swimming lessons). She woke up at about 10:30 and thought she had taken a really long nap and was ready to play.
Friday she went to MDO at Ms. Lori’s. Somehow Ms. Lori got her to take a 2:15 nap in a toddler bed. Good job Ms. Lori. Umm, can you teach me what to do with my own child?
Today she refused a nap again. We tried to get her down from 2 to 4. We did our usual nap routine resulting in a long bout of crying. Then dad went in to rock her and try to get her to sleep. Crying. Mom went in again. Crying. After 2 hours, I decided to just get her up. The frustrating thing is that we had planned to go to the zoo this evening at 5 for a members only extended hours event. With no nap, we decided to miss it because it just isn’t worth the risk of a total meltdown. We tried to tell her that we wanted to take her to the zoo and to go to the zoo she had to take a nap but reasoning with a 17 month old is a little ambitious.
She did finally go to bed at about 7:10, an hour or so earlier than usual. She usually takes a little over an hour nap. I guess that means her cumulative daily sleep is the same but I think that it is still important for her to take naps. This week she goes to Ms. Lori twice and the other three days I am going to drop everything and make the nap my number one priority. It is too important.
