Hayden is 3y3m old and is a spirited/touchy girl who is particularly touchy about sleep. For the last 4 months, I've been giving her a 45 min nap, which has helped to preserve her bedtime.
Her day used to look like this:
6:00 ish wake
12:45 ish nap for 45 mins
7:00 bedtime
Bedtime at our house has to be 7, as Maren also needs to be asleep by 7:30 at the latest and that gives me time to spend with her before she falls asleep. "Mommy time" is important for all of us, and DH helps as much as he can with bedtime, but he can only do so much. Essentially, moving bedtime is not an option.
So the problem is that if Hayden has no nap, she becomes a touchy miserable monster and falls asleep sitting up during circle time at preschool at 11:00 am, so she obviously needs it. But suddenly 45 mins is too much, she's fighting bedtime for an hour or getting up at 5:30 the next morning (or both, leading to the OT touchy miss I mentioned). On the days she's at home, she'll usually catnap in the car going somewhere and that's enough to get her through. On the days she's at preschool, a short catnap doesn't really fit in with the 16 other kids that are in stages of not napping. I asked them to do a 30 minute nap with her but apparently Hayden wakes the other nappers up when she gets woken up, so I got the feeling that it wasn't exactly ideal.
Any suggestions how to handle this? TIA!!
