Silas has never been a great sleeper. Not at all, after the first three days of his life. He rarely slept for more than forty-five minutes at a time. Yes, I’m glad letting them cry worked for your kid. It just made mine angrier. He slept through the night for the first time at fifteen months old. It was my Christmas present. Now that he’s two, he sleeps through about half the time, and the other nights rarely involve more than a couple quick reassurances.
The naps, though. Ug. I kind of hate his naps. It takes forever to get him down, and he rarely stays asleep for more than an hour. I wish he would outgrow needing them. He’s generally quite easy to be around. He’s a pleasant enough kid…until he’s tired. His naps aren’t really a break for me, because I have no way of guessing how long he’ll be down, so it’s hard to plan what to do. Do I have time to go to the bathroom? To cut a dress? Impossible to say! Getting him down for his nap invariably takes longer than the nap itself. It hardly seems worth it.
The trouble is that he hasn’t outgrown it yet, but when I’m home alone with the two of them, I don’t have the time to get him down. If he isn’t sleeping by two, I start to get a lot of total defiance, Petra gets attacked, and the toys, one by one, end up in “toy time out.” Meltdown city. It’s awful. None of us are happy. The kicker is, on days when he doesn’t get a nap, his night sleep is markedly worse. Clearly, the boy still needs his naps. I’ve been trying to institute a daily solo quiet time, but that isn’t meeting his sleep needs. It’s not a very long session, yet. I’m increasing the time by a few minutes each day, so maybe it will eventually be long enough that he’ll just fall asleep during it. I’m not holding my breath…
Twice, I’ve taken them for a long walk and strapped Silas into the stroller on the way home. He’s fallen asleep there and napped for forty-five minutes in the yard. It doesn’t always work, though, and requires good weather. Winter is coming.
I’m just opening this up, begging for ideas and commiseration.
I’ve got no idea as to how to get him to go down for naps. But we’ve finally gotten Delilah to spend the entire night in her own bed, most nights.
Space heater.
The difference between 60 and 70 degrees is evidently a big one. Because while we pile tons of blankets into her crib, it never seemed to work. But with the space heater, magic!