Ever since Kate started sleeping through the night a month ago she’s been waking up between 6 and 7am and refusing to go back to sleep. This is apparently now when her day starts. I realize this is a normal time for kids to wake up in the morning but after a year of a 9am wake-up I am less than thrilled. I tend to not go to bed until midnight, so getting up at 6am makes me Cranky. (I need 8-9 hours of sleep a night. Even broken sleep is okay, but don’t give me less or I’m just sulky.) Even now that Kate is back to waking up two or three times a night (thanks, teeth!) she’s still waking up at 7am. Yippee, the worst of both worlds!

Thankfully she is still very predictable about going down for a nap 2 hours after waking up. Whether we’re up at 6 or 9 she always goes down 2 hours later. Sometimes less, if she’s up super early or had a rough night. She goes down pretty easy and sleeps for 2-3 hours. I often go down with her to get those extra few hours of sleep.

The problem is that she’s been refusing to take a second nap. There was a stretch that she would only fit one nap in per day, when she started taking a 3 hour nap but was still getting up at 9am. Up at 9, down at 11, up at 2. The next time she could have taken a nap was 5, but that would totally fuck with bedtime and she seemed fine without it. Unfortunately now she’s getting up at 6, taking a nap from 8-11, and then refusing to nap the entire rest of the day. By evening she is a cranky, whiny mess and I’m highly irritable myself, having had no time to myself all day (since I took a nap with her, because of the whole 6am thing). She clearly needs 2 naps a day, but I am stymied as to how to get her to go to sleep in the afternoon. I’ve never had this problem before. Today she was looking a little tired, and it had been 2-3 hours since her nap so I tried putting her down. I even was able to nurse her well (she doesn’t always tolerate that during the day), cuddled her, put her in her crib, layed down. Well I fell asleep. I woke with a start 45 minutes later to find Kate sitting in her crib, babbling away and bouncing on her butt. She was apparently having a great time playing in her crib. She was not, however, sleeping. So of course after that failed attempt at a nap an hour later she fell asleep in the truck on the way to my appointment (which is why i was trying to get her to take a nap before my appointment). I will mention that between 3 and 4 she will fall asleep in the truck if we happen to be out… it’s the one way I can actually get her to take a nap in the afternoon, even when she won’t sleep in her crib during that time. I do all the same things as I do for her other nap time, I’ve timed it right (and tried different times), she’s giving me the “ready for nap” signals, all of it. I think she’s just firmly convinced that she doesn’t need a second nap. She almost never gives me a hard time at her first nap.

Needless to say she’s now going to bed at 7pm instead of 8:30. and at least bedtimes are quick and usually painless. (Except when teething. Then they sometimes suck…. and usually on nights when Den isn’t around to give me help.)