The Napping Dilemma

I've posted before about Harper's minimal napping schedule. In the last month her nap times have dwindled from 40 minutes in the morning and another 40 minutes in the afternoon to 20 minutes, then 12 minutes a few weeks ago, and finally this Friday: 0 minutes. She took one 43 minute nap in the morning at 10:12 (I think I mentioned that the record keeping has become very precise at day care now that she sleeps less than any other baby in the place) and then didn't sleep again until crashing hard at bedtime at 5:56pm. I was hoping that the zero minute afternoon nap on Friday was just a fluke, but she did it again today. What baby goes twelve hours with only a 40 minute nap?

Harper was surprisingly less crabby this evening than she has been in the past, and when she goes down for bed she sleeps for twelve hours straight, so I guess I can't complain too much. But most afternoons she definitely needs a nap even though she won't take one, and by the time I've had to entertain a cranky baby for three hours until dinner time rolls around I'm way past needing a nap myself. As adults we're generally more than willing to take a nap in the middle of the day if given the chance, but Harper, who not only has permission but is strongly encouraged, fights napping with every ounce of effort in her little body. The grass is always greener, I suppose.

The poor girl needs her sleep, though, because she picked up a nasty cold, snotty nose and cough from the day care. She wakes up in the middle of the night coughing loud, mucousy man-coughs, which scare me awake when they blast through the baby monitor above our bed. I can say with certainty that she picked this disease up from the day care, because every single kid in her room right now spends most of the day with two green streaks of snot running out of his nose. When I was there over my lunch break last Thursday to nurse Harper I left feeling like I needed a shower. I had to settle for washing my hands several times, which apparently wasn't enough to eliminate all the germs because yesterday I woke up with green snot of my own. I haven't progressed to the man-coughs yet, though. Maybe I can avoid that much at least.

The Dinner Table

After a few weeks of mostly wearing her first attempts at solid food, Harper has now graduated to the high chair and is eating from a spoon like champ. As soon as she sees that you've got the spoon loaded, she opens her mouth and looks at you intently until you fill it. So far we've tried rice cereal, squash and sweet potatoes. I think she likes the cereal and the squash best, though it's kind of hard to tell. (By the way, aren't those some awesome striped tights? Thanks Grandma Linda!)

 

Our feeding challenges come more from her being so darn exhausted by the time dinner rolls around than from her being a picky eater at this point. And by dinner time, I'm talking 5:45 or 6pm at the latest. The last few weeks she's apparently decided that napping is for sissies and has napped for a total of 1.5 hours all day. By the time 5pm rolls around, she's ready for bed and really ticked off that we don't agree. Because she takes such mini naps, they've started counting the individual minutes of her naps at day care. Usually on the little paper report of your kid's day they round up to the nearest 5 or 10 minutes, but today the report said "11:10 to 11:32." This is what she looks like running on 22 minutes of nap time.

We couldn't get her to smile again no matter how many funny faces we made. There was just no delaying bed time at this point. After this picture was taken she was asleep within 15 minutes, and she'll be out for the next 12 hours. At least she sleeps at night!

There might be a few of you who wonder about our selection of high chair decor, knowing that pink is not necessarily our favorite accessorizing color. We needed a high chair when my nephews came to visit after Harper was born, and we hadn't had a chance to get one yet. I looked up some reviews online and told Joe which model to buy on his way home from work. He arrived with a box containing the right model and the words PINK in big letters across the front, which according to him magically appeared only after he'd ripped the box open and dumped out all the parts. Our nephew cared more about eating in it than what color it was, so we kept it and here we are.