My LO is 19 months old and has never been a fabulous napper. We switched to one nap around 17 months and all was fine. Then we moved and everything went wonky and some props krept in. I did wi/wo with him and things got much better in terms of his falling asleep, but he was napping either just 35 minutes or 2 hours and 20 minutes.
I finally thought I had it figured out that he needed to go down after 4 hours and 45 minutes of wake time in order to get a long nap (takes him 10+ minutes to fall asleep, so 5 hours of A time); any later and it was a 35 minute nap. Then I was gone for the weekend and DH put him down waaaaay later (after 6+ hours of A time) and he took fabulous long naps. I'm so confused. I've been sticking with the 5 hours of A time, however.
The last few days, however, things have taken a new turn. Our winddown is books then cuddles and songs and then into the crib. He's big enough now that he hops off my lap to pick out each book. Now after the last book, he hops down and won't come back up for songs and cuddles. So I've been starting to sing and eventually he comes up to my lap. Today he wouldn't come up to my lap at all. When I turned on his white noise CD he tried to attack the book shelves that the CD player is on. He was throwing backs around the room and banging them into the crib and if I tried to pick him up he thrashed and fought wildly. After I finished or normal songs, I put him in the crib which led to a huge tantrum--throwing himself around in there like a WWE wrestler--and wi/wo. He's finally calm now after about 15 minutes and is just fussing and complaining to himself, but still not asleep.
I feel so absurd writing this. He sounds like an out of control wild child.
Any suggestions on how to modify his wind down routine or how to handle it when he goes nuts like this?
Any suggestions on A time? Does it seem like maybe I should experiment with more A time? It's definitely lopsided right now, but he's always been able to handle more A time before bed. It's been a few weeks since I reached my 5 hours of A time conclusion--then he was turning into an over tired disaster who wouldn't even eat lunch if I kept him up any later . . . maybe he's changed in the past few weeks? Could the tantrum be because he just isn't tired yet so he doesn't want to take a nap?
Here's our routine:
8:00am wake up
1:00-? nap (often 2 hours 20 minutes)
9:00pm bed time
His wake time does vary a bit and so I vary the start time for his nap based on that, but keep bed time as constant.
It's been 30 minutes now since I put him down and now he's starting to holler again. Better go do more wi/wo.
Sorry, I'm just feeling a bit pathetic.
