Nap update

As promised, I wanted to update the blog on our current nap status. I was a little afraid to even go there until she had a week of good naps under her belt. A week will be tomorrow so I feel I'm safe to mention this.  (don't want to jinx this - but really who am I fooling? we'll have this new nap pattern in place for maybe 2 weeks and then it'll likely change. sigh.)

Ok, here it goes - Eloise has a new routine. (might I call it a schedule??) She gets up at 6am and then naps from approximately 8-9:20am and then again from 11am-12:20pm.  And as I said, this has been going on for nearly a week. Let me tell you, this is such the polar opposite from where we've been for 8 months that honestly, I thought we had a greyhound in the house again. (they sleep 18-20 hours a day)

So let me break this down. After sleeping since 7pm the night prior (11 hours of sleep), this little nugget is now napping for nearly 3 hours all before 12:30pm.  What?? Where did this come from?? I know she's on the move now and getting faster at crawling daily but is she really wearing herself out that much?

The 2 long morning naps is a little unusual. I've never talked to a mom who had  a baby do this so I'm just going with it. I'm not sure if they'll stay in place for long or if maybe they'll be combined into one long morning nap (although 70-90 minutes is extremely long for Eloise so I'm not complaining whatsoever). Too many unanswered questions and "what ifs" but for now, this is the deal and I'm not going to lie, it's kind of nice having a baby who actually really naps. She's so much happier. Like all smiles nearly all day. Love it!

Oh wait....so the rest of the day's schedule....she usually starts rubbing her eyes again around 2:30 or 3pm and will sleep for her standard 34 minutes. Then most days she'll do this again around 5pm, and again, sleep for 34 minutes. Then we start our nighttime routine at 6:30pm and she's asleep by 7pm.

In conclusion, if this pattern continues, she's taking 4 naps a day for a total of 4 hours. It's so insane, I can't believe I'm even typing this.  And in doing so, I feel she'll never nap like this again as I've just put a curse on us forever. Yes, I'm becoming as superstitious about naps as Mike is about the RedSox. Seriously, give me some drugs.

Let's move on to another subject as quickly as possible.....look what I saw yesterday....

A Monkey with a pacifier??? I almost died!  She has these lying around, typically clipped to links and really serve as nothing more than noise makers. She shakes them like rattles and has never attempted to use them for their original purpose. Because of this, I never bothered putting them up. She's proven from the beginning not to be into pacifiers. She does suck her thumb but what's nice about this is it serves as another signal that she's tired. It's the only time she ever puts her thumb in her mouth. (we'll see how long that lasts)

Anyway, yesterday was the first I've seen her grab the paci and put it in her mouth and suck on it for maybe a good 10 minutes. (I wanted to see how long she'd go. she even dropped it and put it back into her mouth for more sucking.) After my little test, I grabbed all of the pacifiers and have officially put them away. I'm not trying to be mean but since we dodged this bad habit (believe me, I've successfully created SEVERAL bad habits on my own with this sweet little one) why have another to break down the road?

Here we go....MUCH better......