Madeleine is definitely beginning the shift from two naps to one nap a day, and she's in the annoying in-between stage where one nap leaves her a cranky mess by late afternoon, but she's just not tired enough to fall asleep if I put her in her crib a second time during the day. I experimented with a variety of nap schedules this week to see what would work, and I definitely haven't found the proper solution yet. Here's an overview of what I tried and how successful we were:
Option A: Instead of a 10 am and 1pm nap, put her in her crib a little before noon so she can have one big power nap for several hours straight before we have to pick Julia up from school.
How it worked: She fell right asleep at 11:45, and was up and squealing by 1:15. Whoops. She apparently thought it was her morning nap and wasn't tired enough to zonk out for several hours straight. This resulted in her crawling around playing cheerfully until about 2:30pm, at which point she switched to whining miserably about everything. She was such a basket case by the time we picked Julia up from school that I had to stick her back in the crib at 3:15 and ask our baby-sitter not to let her sleep past 4 so that she wouldn't ruin her bedtime sleep.
Option B: Put her in the crib earlier for her morning nap and let her sleep just a half hour or so, then get her down for her afternoon nap at the usual time and hope she'll sleep a few hours.
How it worked: She just wasn't tired enough when I put her to bed around 9:30 so she wound up flopping around in her crib babbling to herself for over an hour before I gave up and got her up. She did sleep well for her afternoon nap, but unfortunately I had to wake her up to go pick Julia up from school, which meant she wasn't well-rested enough and was back to a cranky mess by late afternoon.
Option C: Put her in the crib for her usual morning nap and then try a short afternoon nap a half hour or so later than usual.
How it's working: This was today's plan. She slept for 2 hours this morning, and by 1:30 was starting to fall apart about everything. She is currently whooping delightedly from her crib, having not fallen asleep at all in the 45 minutes she's been up there. I tried going in at one point and rocking her in my arms while singing a lullaby, but instead of getting drowsy she decided to whack her cow taggie against my face over and over with her eyes twinkling and a smile forming around the edges of her pacifier. Looks like we'll have a non-nap for the afternoon, and probably a very cranky girl by 4pm or so today.
In other Madeleine news, today she walked from the middle of the living room over to the couch with no trouble. Probably about 6 steps or so. I now know that she is definitely capable of walking, so her refusal to do so is simply a preference for crawling. If only she had adopted Julia's gimp crawl, she would have realized walking is a much easier way to get around...
Ouch, I remember the in between naps stage. No fun. Yay, glad to hear that Madeleine was brave enough to attempt the steps! I remember her Mom was a really good crawler (and an early one) so that was her preferred choice as well.
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