My DS is 6 mo old, and I've been working on extending his A time (we've had problems of lots of nw, Early wakings, short naps, etc). Through the process of lengthening his A time, I was advised to more or less "ignore" his sleepy cues because he'd be giving them at normal nap times, which I did, and he eventually dropped them at those early times, and started rubbing his eyes when I started to sing his lullaby right at 2.5 hrs. It was perfect. Lately he's been waking at 50~55 min from morning nap. I'm used to aiming for 1.5 hrs. Is this enough? Or should I be trying to get him back down? and when he only sleeps 50 min he acts SO tired before 2.5 hrs (his current A time) for his afternoon nap.
So my questions are:
Day to Day, when should I start going by sleepy cues? Example, today he was acting sleepy at 2 hrs (normal is 2.5 A time) but he had a 50 min AM nap, and had a lot of early morning nws last night. My gut says he was tired and needed his PM nap earlier.
I dropped the catnap about 1.5 weeks ago (fighting it, and early morning wakes). If he's acting particularly sleepy one afternoon (espec after an early or short PM nap) should I go ahead and give him the catnap? Or will that be confusing to him? When I dropped the catnap, I moved up bedtime from 6 to 7 and am trying to slowly push it back, but we are still at 6:15 for now.
Thanks!