I Fought One Nap...

...and the one nap won.

Sam and Anna are now official 1-nap a day twinners at almost 14 months old.  I put up a good fight for a good two months, and I guess I should be satisfied that I strung Anna along successfully for that long to make it less painful for Sam. 

To stretch out two naps as long as possible, we were waking Sam and Anna up from their first nap no later than 1 1/2 hours after going to sleep, and letting them sleep no longer than 11:30 am.  They usually took a decent first nap (being put down around 9:30/10 am), but the afternoon nap was a battle (being put down around 2:30 pm).  We tried adjusting both nap times a little in both directions with no luck.  Some days, Anna refused to sleep again in the afternoon- resulting in her being awake for more than 7 hours in a stretch.  Not nice.  Most days, it took both Sam and Anna a long time to fall asleep for that second nap, resulting in playing and fussing for awhile, even if they were showing sleepy signs prior to being put down.  Sometimes this resulted in babies that wanted to keep on napping past 4 pm.  Also not nice.  The second nap length was all over the board too- sometimes as little as 30 minutes, sometimes 2 hours long, which made it harder to keep our typical schedule intact. 

This two nap schedule just wasn't working with bedtime anymore either.  Sam and Anna had begun to resist bedtime- chatting it up with each other sometimes up to an hour in their cribs.  They needed more awake time before being put down for bedtime, but I still felt they needed their usual bedtime to get enough total night sleep.  Nighttime sleep started becoming scattered with some night wakings on top of that.  All of this added up to a nap schedule that just wasn't working well anymore and something needed to be changed, whether I liked it or not.

Truth is, after experiencing a few days in a row of only one nap, I kind of like it.  I miss having the napping time in the morning to get myself ready (or take a nap myself on the weekends!), but that was just about all I was doing productively during the first nap when I was home.  Now that there's a good solid 3ish hour chunk in the afternoon, it is kind of too late to take a nap myself, I'm already dressed and presentable to go out in public(or I should be by that point)  so I've ended up making really good use of those three hours so far. 

One nap also frees up our morning for more possibilities.  Longer errand runs are possible.  The struggle we've always had with trying to work in a church service between naps and meals works so much easier now.  Going places like the zoo should be more feasible with the one nap plan as well. 

I've found too, that by the time that 3 hour mark rolls around, I'm that much more eager to smother my little ones with hugs and kisses again.  I miss them and their adorable grins and giggles.  I'm excited for them to wake up and see them again, rather than wishing they would sleep longer.

(Our daycare provider also thinks the one-nap plan works better for her routine with her other kids.)

This former one-nap hater might just be warming up to the idea a little.  Now if I can just figure out what to do when an event happens right in the middle of our one nap a day (like Sam and Anna's great-grandma's 90th birthday party in a few weeks)  I might just become a one-nap lover; as long as they continue to last for 3 hours in a stint, that is!