Amaya and I are conducting an experiment the next few days with her napping schedule. For the record, she's never been the greatest napper. Her morning nap is anywhere between 30-45 minutes long and her afternoon nap is about 30 minutes-alone, and another 1-2 hours if I rock her or sleep with her. When she was a baby, I'd almost always rock her to sleep and then try to transfer her to the crib or the carseat and she'd wake up within 5 minutes. Talk about LIGHT SLEEPER! So, I'd eventually end up holding her while she slept. As she got older, when she'd wake up in the afternoon, I'd rush into her room and pick her up and either rock her back to sleep or we'd just lay down together and both take a nap. Granted, I don't mind taking naps with her - it provides great snuggle time and rest! The problem is that I get NOTHING done and it isn't a good habit for Amaya to get into.
Amaya generally sleeps well during the night, except for the fact that she's a night-owl. We put her down anywhere from 8:45-9:30pm and she wakes up between 7-8am. We really shouldn't complain, I mean she's sleeping through the night, right? I decided to try eliminating her morning nap yesterday after getting home from Bible Study. I get home around 11:25am and Steve comes home for lunch around noon, so I have a little more than a half and hour window to put her down. Yesterday, for whatever reason, I thought I'd keep her up and see how long she lasted. Around 2pm, she was nearly falling asleep playing with her toys, so I put her down and she was out for 2 hours, woke up, and then I rocked her back to sleep for another 45 minutes. AMAZING! Once again today, I woke her up at 7:30am and put her down at 2pm and she's OUT! (fingers crossed) I'm hoping that we can eventually get her to bed a little earlier too, so that Steve and I can have some time together before we crash. We'll see how it goes ... now maybe I can get some scrapbooking, cross-stitching, books read, puzzles done, recipes organized, etc.!