Brooke has had a crazy run with naps lately. About a month ago she changed her two 1.5 hour naps to two 2 hour naps. I think this was just something she had to do with the increase in activity: cruising, talking, modeling after other behaviors. She was just pooped! She then went back to 1.5 hour naps. But, she was staying awake longer between naps and her bedtime shifted from 7 until 8pm (occasionally even later), with still the same wakeup time. Essentially, she was losing sleep at night and not making up for it during the day. More recently she has been all over the place. She has been very random with her AM nap. Sometimes she will try to fall asleep only 2 or so hours after she wakes up. Other times she fights her usual naptime (3 hours after she gets up). Some days she sleeps for 45 minutes, other times its for 2 hours.
I figured the later bedtime, combined with the odd AM nap, might mean its time to move to 1 nap. Generally, by 18 months all toddlers are on one-nap-a-day, but the transition is often difficult and happens at different times for different babies. (Check out a bit about napping for 1-2 year olds here).
There is one other random thing she does regarding sleep. She wakes up every morning at about 6:45, but about once or twice a week she sleeps an extra hour ... till 7:45. It doesnt seem to be related to anything. Not her bedtime, or her activity level, or what we did the day before ;) This morning was one of those days. While it created some issues getting to our 8:30AM class, it did provide me an opportunity to push her nap for today. Since she woke up later, I decided to try to keep her up and put her down AFTER lunch. So we went to class, went to Target, came home and played, ate lunch (early), played some more, and went down for a nap at 12:20. I'm hoping she sleeps for a while and that will be it for today! I am sure it will take many months until she is consistently on one nap, but for now its a work in progress. Today marks the official start of our transition. (Wish us luck)
