How do 2 naps progress to 1?

[BabyBsMommy]

Ds will be nine months a week from today.  Last week, his naps slipped back to 45 min each and he was happy, now for the past few days, the AM nap is getting longer again and his A time after is extending so it is getting ridiculously late for a PM nap.  Yesterday he had an AM nap from 10-11:50 and then took his PM nap at 3:30 and I had to wake him at 4:45!  Bedtime is by 7:30.  Today it was the same, but I woke him after an hour and 10  min of AM naptime (11:10) but he just fell asleep now at 3:00.  So, I'm wondering, is this part of the progression to one long nap?  Will the morning one get longer and longer while at the same time his morning A time gets longer until it pushes back to the point that it eliminates the second nap?  Or, am I doing the right thing not letting the first nap go past an hour or so?  After months of crazy naps, things have been going well for a few months and I have relaxed and have been going with the flow and so I don't want to interfere with things if this is just part of the progression that naps make.  I just thought eliminating the second nap didn't come for a while still!

[BabyBsMommy]

Thanks!  Do you think it matters which is the shorter one?  Sometimes I wonder if I should just NEVER wake him from the morning nap and wake him a bit early from the pm one if it's getting too late...

[BabyBsMommy]

Hey Stacy, do you mean early wakings first thing in the morning?  If you do, then this may be a problem - he had an almost 2 hour am nap yesterday and then he woke up crying at 6am this morning, needing his feed and then fell back to sleep.  We'll see what happens tomorrow morning with me having kept his morning nap to an hour and 10 min today, though his afternoon nap was cut off at a half hour due to some noisy guests this afternoon 

[Mom to M&M]

I'd probably stick with one plan (either long morning, short afternoon or vice versa) for at least a week so you can see how it affects his nights, mornings and overall happiness. We did a long morning, short afternoon nap for a long time until DD started refusing the afternoon nap (at around a year) and now we are transitioning to one nap.

[BabyBsMommy]

Ok, then.  I think I'm just going to let him sleep as long as he happens to sleep in the morning and then if he has a late short sleep in the afternoon not worry about it.  If for some reason he wakes up after only 45 min - 1 hour in the morning, I'll w2s the afternoon nap to get an extra 20 min or so out of him.  I was just worried about him not being tired to go to sleep by 7:30pm if he isn't going down in the afternoon until 3:30 or 3:45 (last time that happened, he napped until almost 4:30 and then only had 3 hours of A time before bed when he can happily go 4 hours).  I was away for the day yesterday so DH let him wake up on his own from the morning nap and he woke up at an hour and 15 min.  Then he had a 10 min afternoon nap!