Is it possible for a toddler to get too much sleep? For the past several weeks, Genevieve's naturally spunky personality has been peppered with fits of extreme clinginess, bossiness, and random contrariness. Not that this is unusual behavior for a two year old, but the fact that she's able to sustain a mounting level of two-ness until well after 11:00 pm is exhausting.
For most of the summer, she has woken up between 8:30 and 9:00 in the morning, napped for about two hours in the afternoon, and then, regardless of whether those two hours were from 1:00 to 3:00 or 3:00 to 5:00, she refuses to bed down for the night until well after the eleventh hour. And believe me, that expression is appropriate because the situation becomes dire. At that point in the day, I. Have. Had. Enough.
So today, she missed her nap. We were helping a friend tackle some largish regrouping and rearranging projects at her house for most of the day, and for most of that time Genevieve played happily with the other kids. Sure she had her moments, but she was mostly pretty good. At one point we rode to Germantown to pick Somerset up from her cousin's house, and I hoped she might take a quick doze and then wake up refreshed but ready to turn in at a decent hour. Instead, she talked the whole time, as she does now in the car. As she did all the way to Dauphin Island and then back to Memphis. So she never napped, but she lasted beautifully even through a restaurant meal involving three adults and six children!
When we got home, she played with her brothers and sister some more, requested and took a bath, and then went easily to bed at around 8:00. Eight O'Clock! I don't quite know what to do with myself! I'm sure that somewhere around 10:00 she'll wake up, but I feel fairly confident that she'll just nurse and fall back asleep.
Is it possible that naps have been making my baby into the bad seed?
6 comments:
I would say it's the waking up at 9:00. My two-year-old sleeps about ten hours at night with a two hour nap, but her ten hours are 8-6 rather than 11-9. It's just a trade-off of when your sweet, sweet no-toddler time comes- we prefer having ours at night, but if we didn't have to get up at 6:00 a.m. to get ready for work/school I probably rather have her sleep in. And I really love that nap time on the weekends- it's good to have a couple of daylight hours without her clinging to me. But if Genevieve and you do well with no nap, I say skip it. Sounds like you had a very pleasant day with that schedule!
Harper goes to bed every night between 7:30 and 8:30 and sleeps until about 7:30 in the morning. She currently is still taking a morning and afternoon nap, but I am trying to get her to just take one long nap in the afternoon. It's not working out so well. But I love that she goes to bed early because then we have the evening to do whatever we want or need to do--which usually involves sitting on the couch and watching bad tv.
max stopped taking naps at 2 1/2. but he was still required to hang out in his room for 2 hours each day while i napped or what have you. if i haven't already told you the potato story, remind me to tell you the cautionary tale of napping while a three year old was awake.
i resisted giving satchel's nap up but once he stopped napping bedtime became 1000 times better. he usually falls asleep within 5 minutes now versus an hour before.
p.s. i hoped y'all dined somewhere that will result in a dwm entry. :)
I don't know, give it a try. Liz is a horrible bed-goer and always has been. I think everyone is just cursed with one, whether it takes you one kid to get to that one, or four, eventually you will have one.
Nap or no nap, sitting and watching cartoons most of the day or having a traipse all over town, Liz sleeps from 11 to 9. You can put her in bed earlier than that, and sometimes she'll actually stay there and play quietly with her stuffed animals (or her fingers, making them converse with each other if stuffed animals are unavailable), but the child will not SLEEP until 11. Then you can get her up earlier (which isn't fun, the waker will be punished) and force her to be awake through the day and still, at about 9, she gets her second wind and pulls through until 11.
I'm sorry, that's just the way it is. I'm sorry for us because it sucks, and I'm sorry for you, since the sleep time is just about identical. You may just have to suffer through as we have.
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