Fighting the nap

Technically, it's Tobey fighting the nap but instead of titling this "Tobey: Fighting the nap" I've done it this way because I'M the one fighting it too.

Not only am I fighting it in that I want to preserve the 1.5+ hours I can have for my own nap, but I'm fighting it because I can't figure it out. Talking to other 3+ year olds' moms, I'm finding similar patterns: if our kids take a substantial nap in the afternoon, they'll stay up late at night and in our case, our oasis of child-free time from 9-11PM is lost; but they don't usually get tired until after 3PM and what do you do?

I've been experimenting with a shorter nap to see if that makes him a little more tired by bedtime. Last weekend after Janet & Felix's baby shower, Tobey took a 1 hour nap in the car. Great, I thought, it wasn't that long of a nap. But he still wouldn't fall asleep at night until 10:30.

Then I was willing to wake him up after 1.5 hours of nap or by 4 or 4:30. It's not as painful as I thought to wake Tobey up early -- I just have thoughts of telling him to go back to bed for the 10th time at 10:30 and I'm willing to wake him up. It IS painful because he can't always wake up peacefully and ends up waking up Eli. It IS painful because sometimes I'M not the one that wants to get up to go wake him up.

So last week after spending as long as I could at Alice's for lunch (whose 4 year old doesn't nap) before Eli collapsed, I decided to just skip Tobey's nap for an experiment. The result: he konks out mid-bite at dinner. But he wouldn't go to bed just yet, but did stay down after an earlier bedtime at 8 instead of 9.

Yesterday after Justin's birthday party, we got home at 3:30 and decided to experiment with skipping his nap. The result: he puts himself to bed on the couch at 4:45.

Today after church, dimsum, Skylawn and Stanford with my parents, Tobey konks out in the car at 3PM. Clearly, he needs a nap -- when and how long is still the question.

So my little oasis of free time in the afternoon is still safe, but not for long.