Lucy's naps are really the best time for me to get anything accomplished (for example: undo the mess she made, plus any other cleaning or TV watching or playing on the Internet...) and for the past week, more consistently than ever, she isn't taking 2 good naps. If she takes a nice nap in the morning, it always results in not napping in the afternoon. And vice-versa. So I get to decide whether or not I want her nap (my "break") in the morning or afternoon. I would have to say afternoon, which is when I hit the wall of being tired. Yet she is currently down for a nap because she was acting tired and woke up twice last night (she never EVER wakes up in the middle of the night)...
... which is a short story that needs to be explained. She started crying for no reason around 12:00 midnight, I figured she has a toofer poking through and flip on the hall light so I can see enough of what I'm doing to give her a bit of Tylenol. She is so upset that the can't stand still and pulls her head back just as I squeeze the dropper, and red cherry Tylenol drops onto her crib sheet. I'm a freak about treating stains immediately, so of course I have to call Ron in to hold her while I change her sheet. At midnight. You know this requires removing the bumper pad, lifting the mattress out of the crib and pulling the sheet over the four corners. I swear the crib sheet factory workers must be laughing all day thinking about how they make those fitted sheets just 2 inches shorter than they should be, and the frustration they are going to cause. Anyway, then she woke up again at 4:30 and fell back asleep after a couple minutes of crying. So strange.
All this would make me think she would actually sleep this morning, but she's not. That's okay too - this is known as "quiet time", but I hear her in there playing and feel like I am neglecting her, or missing an opportunity to stimulate her developing brain. Although that sounds dramatic, because at the end of the day I know the long-term effect(s) are minimal. Lucy gets plenty of stimulation, and I shouldn't feel bad for giving both of us a break. It's like playing Snood when you should be filing a never ending tidal wave of depositions. It keeps you sane.
2 comments:
Ugh. Aren't naptime/nighttime problems the worst?? Ella is in the process of dropping a nap...every other day or so she needs a morning and afternoon nap and the other days she only takes an afternoon nap.
Sometimes you never know what those random nighttime wakeups are about...sometimes teeth, sometimes ears and sometimes just because.
Hope you both get some more sleep in the next few days :)
Don't feel bad about "quiet time". In our house we call in "alone time" and I try to giver her about 1/2 hr/day. I think it is so important for children to learn to play happily by themselves. (I was never good at this as a child).
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