Today she napped for almost 2 hours total because I changed the plan.
When Hartley started walking, Brian and I high fived each other. While the rest of the world warns you about your kid starting to walk being a bad thing, we were thrilled that we could finally wear Hartley out. I remember saying, "as soon as the weather gets nice, I'm having her walk around the neighborhood circle until she passes out from tired". Well, I thought my plan would go even better when right before the spring weather started, Hartley started running.
But to my surprise, something funny happened, napping got harder than it was before.
Color me surprised. I thought if I got my child to run around all day, she'd be a napping goddess. Turns out for Hartley, it has the opposite effect.
Now that she walks, she literally doesn't stop moving. Have you ever seen a picture of my baby in recent weeks sitting on her butt? Nope, because it physically doesn't happen unless he's strapped to a high chair. Even if she's confined to a small space she just walks from each corner to the other, hardly pausing, never sitting. It's impossible for anyone to understand outside Brian, my parents and I. We've all had her on our watches for prolonged periods of time so we get what it means to describe a child as never being still. My dad jokes - very accurately - that Hartley has no "off switch". And both my parents say after watching her, they just want to go home and sleep because it is exhausting.
I'm very used to it. I've addressed it with my doctor. They've assured me it's nothing to worry about, that it's going to just be tiring more than anything else.
Well, Sunday Hartley ate her lunch with her eyes closed. She was that tired. Can you imagine being that tired to where you physically can't manage to open your eyes when you eat? She got that way just from non stop moving. And Sunday night, Brian looked at me and said, "do you realize she didn't even nap for an hour with all her weekend 'naps' combined?"
This morning, I decided this couldn't continue. I refused to let my baby eat lunch with her eyes closed again. So I carried her downstairs and kept her in the living room all morning. No running. No dancing. I read to her - a dozen books. I tried to show her how to color. We played with her shape sorter, her ring stacker and her name puzzle. We went over every animal in her toy basket. And for the most part, I kept her physically still.
Her morning nap was 30 minutes! Success!
I repeated this after lunch. Then I gave her a bath. Her afternoon nap? An hour and 20 minutes!
Now, maybe today was just her ceiling but I think Hartley needed to stop running and bouncing and dancing for a bit. I think we need to establish some balance between physically moving and moving her mind. I think her body gets physically exhausted but her mind doesn't. This is something I know very well being an insomniac myself. My body can be dead tired but my mind can't stop. Outside of that, you hear of kids getting overly tired - that is my kid. She can't help being a busy body, unless I help keep her in one spot for as long as I can to get her body to calm down.
I don't need her to be some champion napper. Honestly, I'm not even a person who really likes the day to be wasted on sleep. But I'm hoping for her not to get to the point where she can't open she eyes while she eats. It's funny but it's also a little sad that my kid is that tired.
So sometimes, when you've tried all the logical solutions - go the other direction to change it up. I can honestly say we're going to be doing a lot less running here in hopes of a few Z's!
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