To those who tune in every day, sorry about the lack of a post waiting for you this morning. I almost blacked out of tiredness last night so I decided to go to bed early for a change. Yay, me!
Day 7
As predicted, it was a day of car naps. Not all intentionally, mind you. Regardless, it was my most uneventful day so far:
9:15 – Fell asleep in the car again, right after dropping off Alex. Napped for an hour. Woke up, did some of our usual playtime activities, and had some lunch.
We’ve been trying different fruits (and foods in general) out, and he took well to pears. Chinese Yellow Pears in particular, but also those ones with brown skins. We had yet another kind of pear later (yes, it was an experiment) and he did NOT love it. It was one of the more standard green types, but a firmer less sweet one. For obvious reasons it wasn’t a hit.
12:30 – It was near naptime, but I had some stuff to get done. I don’t mind saying that I knew he’d fall asleep in the car. Which he did. Parked for a while at Service Canada (dropping of ROE for parental leave benefits) giving him a total of almost an hour of nap again.
After Service Canada, did an exchange at Future Shop. He was starting to get tired and hungry, so I figured it was time to head home and see if I could do a home nap.
3:00 – On our way home, but not nearly close enough, he starts losing it in the car seat. He was playing with his toque, and managed to twist it around in front of his eyes, which he was not a fan of. He also had a wet diaper. He was also hungry. Dad was REALLY on top of his game for that one! (rolls eyes).
As it turns out, we were near my mom’s place of work, so we popped in for a visit. He really enjoyed seeing grammy, and once he was fed and changed was all smiles for a little while. Called Mama Monkey up and asked if we could pick her up early (so as to not bother going home first). As it turns out, the visit lasted long enough that we could have got her at the regular scheduled time (we were only 15mins early compared to plan, after all).
I’m drawing a blank on whether he had a third nap at a reasonable hour. Mainly, as soon as mom is around to help again, I feel such a wave of relief that the rest of the day (even if I’m still helping out some) is easy.
Day 8 – The Madness
Which day was it that he had that 4 hour without nap streak? I can’t remember… day 2 or 3? Anyhow, read that post again. This was basically the same day.
Started off with another car nap. He had only been up for an hour (if that), and was awake the whole time we were driving Mama to work. Fairly wide-eyed even. But literally 20 seconds after Alex kissed him g’bye, he closed his eyes and went to sleep for over an hour.
But then the craziness cycle began.
Naturally, no crazies at first. Awake, having fun… made it to lunch, lunch was good (he REALLY liked this particular type of green pears; the softer and sweeter ones… obvious why he’d like them)… happy boy. But then the first attempt to put him down failed. His eyes were closed. He wasn’t really drinking milk, and there was only a swallow or two left. Put him down on the bed, where he lost contact with the bottle. Not good. Tried to put the bottle back in, but the milk must’ve gotten cold by then and he spit it out and started crying.
Crying, rejecting milk, rejecting being held… that was my lot for the next 2 hours. Put him in his jolly jumper at one point so that I could IM Alex and try to get some pity (which I did… she’s the best!).
At one point he was so unhappy at me for not being able to put him to sleep that he turned beet red and was crying like a demon. Yay for dad’s awesome parenting skills!
Where it went differently was when I “gave up”. This time I went to the dog park, and even after we got there he didn’t fall asleep for another 15 minutes. Took a couple laps, giving him about a 45-minute nap. Then we went home briefly (where he almost fell asleep without fuss but then decided at the last minute not to) before picking up mommy.
He did NOT take his third nap easily. And he did NOT go to bed easily either.
Sleep begets sleep, right Steve?
Anticipating Day 9
Tomorrow’s Friday. I think I’m going to try two things:
1. Try the second nap BEFORE lunch rather than after (logic told me that on a full stomach he’d be more likely to nap, but let’s face it, he doesn’t really get ‘FULL’ on anything but milk).
2. If he seems resistant, I’m going to try the swing (and let him hold his own milk if he wants to… he’s pretty good at that). I really don’t think it’ll work, but I’m desperate. I’ll try anything.
If he doesn’t go down by himself by 3 hours after the previous wake-up (maybe 3.5 if I’m really convinced we’re close), I’ll be off to Nana’s place to get some backup and sanity. Otherwise if he DOES co-operate, we’ll go after lunch.
