Times are changing

I am facing a sad but also liberating time in Lucy's development - waving goodbye to the Morning Nap. Lucy has been a great sleeper pretty much since day one, and getting her daytime napping schedule sorted from an early age remains, in my mind, one of my greatest successes as a Mum so far.

But true to what the books say, we are closing in on 18 months of age and Lucy is not really in need of her morning sleep anymore. She has started waking first thing at about 8am, so between that and her activities which are usually mid/late morning, a nap is hard to squeeze in. She is also reluctant to go down, favouring running around and staying very awake to get more playtime in!

Sad for me to lose that morning time to shower, clear up the breakfast stuff and check email before my 'working' day really begins. But also liberating because for the first time in Lucy's life, we have a nice long period of time in the day when we can get out and do things without that pressure of a looming nap or mealtime to get home for. So against the lazier side of my brain, I now get up before Lucy does and shower, get into somewhat of a human state of mind and prepare for the day. OK I shower, get half dressed and if I am lucky I get my hair dried before she cries out and wants to get up (I really should get up even earlier so that I spend the day looking like I put a bit more effort into my appearance!).

This morning I had some clearing up to do and some cleaning of snow splattered wood floors, the kind of jobs I normally saved for morning nap time. But she joined in this morning, happily played around me and watched. I think if I bought her a mini mop she would get stuck in a help out. I do have some skirting board to dust too...

But I have found that with this new freedom from two naps a day to only one, Lucy thinks that it's OK to not nap at all!! So the past few days have been challenging when it comes to afternoon nap time. I have resorted to a trick that Joe tried last week when he was on his own with Lucy at bedtime and couldn't get her into the sleepy way of thinking. He put her in her cot, said goodnight, left the light on and gave her a book to read.

Well that did it. She now wants to take a book to bed with her every time she gets into her cot. I always close the door to her room when she naps, and we have long removed the camera we had above her bed, so I have no idea what she does with the book in bed. But when I put her down today for her afternoon nap with 'Goodnight Gorilla', she clutched the book in one hand and sucked her other sleeve (as she always does at bedtime), looking very much like she was off to sleep. She waved and said 'bye bye' and continued to look set for a sleep. But as I turned to look back at her when half way across the room, she was digging in to the book and having a good old read. It really seemed as though she had been pretending that she was going to sleep, but as soon as my back was turned, she was opening the pages and sneaking a read.

Well I didn't hear from her until just over 2 hours later, so even if she read that short story over and over again in silence, she certainly left me to have some downtime and get some jobs done. It feels to me like my working hours have just increased and it'll take me a few weeks to get used to it. But I think nature's way is uncannily in tune with when the time is right. Lucy is becoming more able to sit and play near me (or even in a different room) so for her to see me doing other things and even help me with chores at times, then this one nap a day thing is certainly not going to be too difficult to handle.