Down to One.

My love bug is officially a one nap a day baby, and I have to be honest, I love it. Most moms worry and stress when a nap is dropped, but it just seems like it's streamlined my life.

And let's be honest - six weeks ago I spent up to three hours a day HOLDING my 25 pound baby so that she could take naps. So any sort of alone time/naptime/bedtime is more than I had before.

Last week on Monday and Tuesday she took a morning nap, and then was an angry bear jerkwad all day long. No afternoon nap, no matter how hard I tried. So I decided that we would spend a little more time being awake in the morning, and go down sometime after noon. It's been a revelation.

Somedays she naps less than she did formerly (for instance, she'll only nap for an hour, that's it) but I feel like for the 45 minutes of nap time I lose, I also lose 45 minutes or more of time stuck in her room, trying to rock her to sleep, trying to shush her and pat her back while also trying not to get frustrated and irritated. Now when we do nap time, we go in, we stand and rock for a couple of minutes and I tell her that it's time for a nice nap, it's time to go to sleep, and usually, the second I lay her down, her eyes flutter and she's out. I usually lay there and count to 100, then sneak away and go celebrate in the living room. I also feel like there's less rushing and stressing about timeline. I don't have to get home in the morning to get her down by a certain time. We don't have to leave the park in the afternoon so that she can have a snack and nap by 4pm. We just hang out in the morning, and then have all afternoon to do as we please.

It's not a bad life.