Towards the end of last year, Sebastian was showing signs of being ready to switch from two naps a day to one. He would go down for his morning nap no problem, but when it came to his afternoon one it was becoming very hit and miss. Some days he would have a nap.. Others he wouldn’t.. And some days he would have the world’s smallest cat nap.. Problem was he was still needing more sleep, the hour and a half in the morning was not enough to see him through the remainder of the day.
When Sebastian transitioned from three naps to two, it was a natural progression. Slowly he dropped his late afternoon nap, (this one usually took place on a walk) and the remaining two both just stretched out to a little later in the day. This time round was another story. Where he was use to having his morning nap between 10/10.30am there was no was I was just going to be able to stretch it out to 12/12.30 (where it needed to be to be able to cope with only one nap). And so began the process of transitioning from two naps a day to one.
We picked It was a funny time of year to start something like this because of everything happening – Christmas, New Year, Steve being off on holiday, none of our usual activities happening etc, but we went with the flow. We took it slowly, and on days when it worked out that way we stretched it (his morning nap) out by half an hour each week. Yes, it took me just over a month! But it is what he needed and he was ready. To help with the transition I made sure we got out of the house most mornings, getting out for a walk, trips to the park, or to do the groceries etc. This made it a lot easier to ‘stretch’ out the morning and provide a much needed distraction. Plus it kept both Sebastian and Me sane.
Now most days he naps between 1 1/2 and 2 1/2 hours, which leaves this Mumma plenty of time for – washing (need to); meal prep (have to); blogging (want to) and all those other fun things us Mumma’s do on a daily basis. Now we are back into the ‘school term’ and all of our activities (playgroup, wriggle & rhyme, mainly music and monthly mummy mornings at the mall) have started back, only having one sleep a day is fabulous! It means we can have lots of fun in the morning – mixing with other mums and kiddies; an awesome nap in the afternoon (cause we are tired after all that fun) and then fun around home or at the park in the afternoon.
Some days though are still a two nap kind of day (like today) because life happens and it can be exhausting being little. There is SO much of the world to see and do – you don’t want to miss out. Then some days you need to play catch up. Today we are playing catch up!
I’m interested… How did you know your little on was ready to drop a nap and how did you go about it? Did you drop it all of a sudden or just move it out slowly?
It’s so funny because I don’t remember when my son transitioned. He’s three now and he still takes a nap in the afternoon, but I don’t remember him napping twice in a day. Though his dad was home with him for the first year and a half so I may have missed the transition. Sounds like one nap is working out really well for the two of you!
Funny how quickly time flies, isn’t it. I was writing this and it felt like ages ago when he was napping three times a day. Time sure flies when you are having fun. xx