Then when I was talking to my sister last night, she broke the news to me: he's probably ready to drop the naps. Though her son napped until age three, her daughters stopped napping in the day around the age of two. Unfortunately, I think she may be right.
Sprout can go nearly nine hours without sleeping in the daytime & usually sleeps through the night. We're in an awkward stage where he can't quite go the whole day without a nap, but if he does nap, he'll end up waking at 7 or 8pm, which pushes back his bedtime to ridiculous o'clock.
Besides the fact that I don't relish going through a month or so of Sprout falling asleep during dinner until he transitions to no naps, I've gotten a lot more writing work lately. Sprout not napping means I will have to shift my writing to before he wakes up (ugh) or after he goes to bed. Or I'll have to spend more money on childcare, which sort of defeats the purpose of working.
On days when I don't have writing work I need to do, the break that I get when he has a nap really keeps me sane. I can't really complain--Sprout's a pretty easy-going kid & he spends a lot of time playing by himself these days--but I'll miss having the house to myself for a couple of hours in the middle of the day.
I suppose the other thing that's bothering me about all this is that I feel like I'm on shifting sand all the time. Even if I had been more strict about having a set nap time, it would have shifted & adjusted anyway as he developed. The only constant is change, when it comes to children.
So tell me: is your toddler getting ready to give up naps? Or have you got older kids & been there, done that? Any advice?
My 4.5 year old transitioned out of napping over a long period, maybe 6 months, between 2 and 3 years old. She will still occasionally fall asleep in the car, and we were still hiking with her on our backs until last fall, so she'd fall asleep there too. It is a two steps forward, one step back process, so he may be off naps for a while, then go back to them, then back off etc. Enjoy the days he does nap! And really, once they are done with naps it's pretty awesome to be able to get out in the afternoons and do stuff, especially in the summertime. My 21 month old daughter is NOWHERE NEAR giving up naps! She needs an afternoon nap for sure, but sometimes we can stretch it until a 2 or 2:30pm start, then just put her to bed later. Luckily, unlike her older sister, a later bedtime for Emily typically results in a later wake-up, so this has been a great option for us. Megan used to just wake up earlier, the later she went to bed - yuck!!
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