Bad nap question...

[Carmela's Mom]

Knock on wood, but for the past three nights Carm slept through the night and slept for 11.5 hours!!!!!!  We finally had a routine that seemed to suit her....

Now today of course she has a crappy nap.  I put her in at 12:30 and she only slept for one hour, which for her anything under 1 hour and 45 mins is awful ..... (I'm not sure if the construction outside woke her up or if she was too stimulated from the gym's daycare today and so she didn't sleep well)

Now my question is should I put her to bed earlier tonight?  Or keep it the same?  I hate to ruin our wonderful routine that does have her sleeping through so wonderfully.  Ya know??  Please give me some help!

Her routine has been:

6:50-7:15 wake
8:00 breakfast
11:30 lunch
12:30 nap
2:15 wake up (today was 1:30)
2:30 snack
5:30 dinner
6:00 bath
7:00 snack
7:30 bedtime

Now today we went to the gym at 9-11 and I'm thinking maybe that is why she didn't sleep well...too stimulated....or it could have been the construction outside which is pretty noisy today (and hasn't been going on all weekend when she slept great for naps!)

[elfin]

I would try and stick as closely to bedtime as possible.  However, if you sense that she is crashing later today, then I would be inclined to put her down for bed a bit earlier.  The days when Myles has had a short nap, we will put him down 10-15 minutes earlier and keep things pretty low key after dinner.

That is sooo great that she has slept through the last few nights!

[Carmela's Mom]

I am in absolute tears...we put her in at 7:30 tonight and she fell asleep at 7:45.  9 p.m. she started her first cry fest.  which I KNOW leads to HOURS of being up in the middle of the night and MONTHS and MONTHS of this.  I should be thankful I got three good nights.  I really don't know what to do.  ONE bad nap and that's it.  I don't know how to go on like this!

[shericaprice]

I have also found that if my nap schedule gets off, I have the hardest time with bedtime and my daughter is much more likely to wake up at night.  The best thing I can tell you is to keep to your schedule as best you can - eventually it irons itself out!

[TnTsmama]

I know that what works for me on bad nap days is to put my LOs down for bed a little earlier.  Especially for my 2 year old.  If he doesn't get a long enough nap, he starts to melt down earlier in the evening.  I go with that, and put him to bed.  (usually about a half hour earlier, or so.)  It seems to help him sleep thru the night.  If I keep him up for regular bedtime, he gets overtired and will wake up in the middle of the night or blazingly early the next day.  I read somewhere that earlier bedtimes lead to later wakeup times anyways. 
I also try to heed this with my 12 week old, who is still struggling with the 40 minute nap monster.  If we don't get enough of those in, I let him crash out earlier at bedtime to avoid getting overtired.  It seems to work for me... Good luck.  I know how that is, I've been there.