Hi,
My spirited daughter is now lengthening her A time in the morning to 4 hours...sleeps one hour and then fights the afternoon nap. I just got her down at 4pm. She has also been getting up earlier in the morning than normal (6:00-6:30 instead of 7am) and wanting to go to sleep later at night (like 8:30pm instead of 7:30pm). She is not fighting am nap...just the pm nap.
Here is our current schedule (this started about one week ago)
6:30am Wake
7:00am Breakfast
9:00am Bottle
10:30am Nap (my Mom said that at 10:00am she wanted nothing to do with a nap, wiggled away from her, etc) - when my DD is ready for a nap she will start to rub her blankie on her face, not wiggle away.
11:30am Wake
12:00 Lunch
4:00 Nap (after much battling to the point where she wants to wiggle away from me, won't let me read her a book, kicks off her blankie, throws away soother so I just plop her in the crib and let her mantra cry and say Mom-mom-mom for 20 minutes before there is silence and she is finally napping)
5:00 - I wake her but she could easily sleep till 5:30
8:30-9:00 - is finally tired and ready to go to bed without a fuss
Because she is napping so late in the afternoon all of a sudden (used to be 2:00-3:30) she wants to go to bed later. She has also just learned to walk this week and is practicing taking 7 to 10 steps. I want her to sleep earlier in the afternoon if possible....to not affect her bedtime so much.
What in the world can I do? Should I drop her morning nap to 30 minutes or what? I am scared to do it at the 45 minute mark as she used to be a 45 minute napper and finally on her own around 7 months she finally started to sleep 1.5 hours during naps. I'm just scared to get her back into that 45 minute nap timing. So should I do 30 minutes instead?
Any help would be appreciated.