The Great Nap Drop

A week and a half ago, Nick and I made a decision. It was time to try a little experiment. The 6 months of bedtime antics was wearing on us, as were the super early mornings. Plus, I was tired of battling the boys over nap time so many days of the week.

When they started preschool a week and a half ago, I knew they weren’t going to be napping on Thursdays anymore. By the time I get them home we’re past the latest time I would let them fall asleep (1:30), so on that first day I told them we were going to have a quiet time and watch a movie. No arguments from them and they all sat quietly on the couch for an hour or so.

The next day we went apple picking and got home later than anticipated. By the time we fed them lunch it was again nearing that nap time deadline. Darn! So we did quiet time again. That night I pitched the idea to Nick of dropping the naps for a week or so and seeing what happened. He was game as long as I was, because as he put it, I would be the one to suffer most of the consequences if this didn’t go well.

Saturday we did quiet time again and it went well. On this night we started to see some bedtime improvement – they were all asleep by 8:30pm! Pretty much a record since January or February.

Sunday we didn’t really do a quiet time because the big Dora show was smack in the middle of that. The boys DID fall asleep for about 20 minutes on the way home that afternoon, but again, were all asleep in their beds early – this time 2 out of three were asleep by 8:15! Oh my!

I will say this though – it’s not like this was all a seamless transition. No, we had some serious cases of the crabbies (Jackson especially) in the late afternoon and early evening. We finally decided that until they settled into this new routine we shouldn’t plan any trips out of the house after about 5pm. They just couldn’t handle it.

Monday the sickness hit our house. The last week has been tricky and may or may not be skewing our sleep experiment results. I’ve allowed napping during quiet time, because I figure I love to sleep when sick and they probably do too.

(You can’t see him here, but Chase was curled up at Nick’s feet fast asleep too. This was taken yesterday afternoon. And yes, my husband did his best to make  the picture even cuter.)

They also have been still going to bed without a fight. Again though, who knows if it’s just because they’re so run-down now because of the sickness or because they still aren’t napping for the most part.

Know what else we’ve been seeing (both before and after the sickness hit)? No more 6am or earlier wake-ups! Woohoo! On the off chance that one wakes up that early, it’s just to use the bathroom and they actually, get this, go back to sleep! Do you hear the angels singing? This morning, Jackson didn’t wander out here until 7:50am. Considering he fell asleep at about 8:20pm last night he got almost 12 hours of sleep! Whew!

Bottom line: so far, this seems to be working in our favor. No more fighting them to go to sleep for 90+ minutes at night, no more early wake-ups and no more fighting them to nap in the afternoon. After they’re all healthy I guess we’ll see if it’s still working! Speaking of which, time to get these boys to the doctor… 6+ days of fevers can’t be good.