It was warmer today than it has been for weeks so I decided to skip nap and take T to the park instead. T will be starting a dance class once a week and be skipping nap that day so I figured I may as well give it a trial run. She rarely skips nap but sometimes takes it very late, like from 4-6pm. Whether she naps early, late, or not at all, she never seems to go to bed before 9pm and generally it's more like 10 or 10:30 before we're actually out of her room.
The results of my experiment were... it was a bit more work for me. Since T didn't nap, neither did I (I nap with her 4-5 times a week), so I was tired too. We went to the park for 2 hours and it was definitely colder than I thought it would be. We started out with no jackets and then went to jackets, hats, scarves, mittens and huddling for warmth! But T got a bit of exercise (barely) and I actually got to talk to a few adults. Then we went to the Penn bookstore. Usually T is very self sufficient there and will occupy herself really well. With no nap she was little more clingy and needed me to read to her and interact more. Fine.
The weirdest thing about the few times T has skipped nap is that she kind of gets violent. I guess she gets frustrated more easily and a primal instinct takes over or something. T has never been a biter or hitter, which I attribute to her early verbal skills. When she naps she gets a semi-evil look in her eye and besides being more prone to (short) meltdowns she can get kind of devilish and do things that she knows will piss me off, like spitting food on the floor or throwing things. Dinner was a little bit of a challenge and she overreacted to silly things, like Ron sitting in "her" spot on the couch.
I had to really enforce an early schedule and we had dinner, played for 1/2 an hour, bath and then the bedtime routine. It's 8:51 and she's in bed but Ron is still in her room. She has been wanting him to be the actual person who puts her to sleep and that is FINE with me! A big change over the past 8 months or so. Hopefully he'll be able to leave her room soon and come down and we can spend some QT together. That usually means me suffering through the PBS news hour but that's another post...
The results of my experiment were... it was a bit more work for me. Since T didn't nap, neither did I (I nap with her 4-5 times a week), so I was tired too. We went to the park for 2 hours and it was definitely colder than I thought it would be. We started out with no jackets and then went to jackets, hats, scarves, mittens and huddling for warmth! But T got a bit of exercise (barely) and I actually got to talk to a few adults. Then we went to the Penn bookstore. Usually T is very self sufficient there and will occupy herself really well. With no nap she was little more clingy and needed me to read to her and interact more. Fine.
The weirdest thing about the few times T has skipped nap is that she kind of gets violent. I guess she gets frustrated more easily and a primal instinct takes over or something. T has never been a biter or hitter, which I attribute to her early verbal skills. When she naps she gets a semi-evil look in her eye and besides being more prone to (short) meltdowns she can get kind of devilish and do things that she knows will piss me off, like spitting food on the floor or throwing things. Dinner was a little bit of a challenge and she overreacted to silly things, like Ron sitting in "her" spot on the couch.
I had to really enforce an early schedule and we had dinner, played for 1/2 an hour, bath and then the bedtime routine. It's 8:51 and she's in bed but Ron is still in her room. She has been wanting him to be the actual person who puts her to sleep and that is FINE with me! A big change over the past 8 months or so. Hopefully he'll be able to leave her room soon and come down and we can spend some QT together. That usually means me suffering through the PBS news hour but that's another post...
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