Thursday, July 10, 2008

The almost sleep-less day

Today was crazy. Like Twighlight Zone crazy. Emerson woke up at 5:30 a.m. I was able to get her to fall back asleep for about 45 more minutes. I know she didn't really sleep that entire time though because I kept hearing her talking and playing in her crib off and on. At 6:25 she was finished playing/sleeping and ready to get up. Unlike the other days this week, she was not as crabby this morning. This was a welcome change.


She played and played until she literally fell asleep on my bed (we were in our room playing itsy-bitsy spider). At that point I carried her to her room for her 9am naptime. Normally I let her sleep 2-2.25 hours and then have to go in a wake her up. So, at 10:15 when she woke up and re-fused to go back to sleep, I knew it was going to be a long day.

We had a playdate with Rylie and Kari today, so I was hoping that Emy would at least take a nap in the car on the way to their house. We got to Kari's at 11:30 after Emy played for the 45-40 minute drive instead of napped. I was seriously worried at this point. We were going to be at someone elses house, with a playful little girl and we were running way below our sleep quota for the day. I was certain that it was going to get ugly...it was just a matter of when.

To make the rest of the story short, Emerson played with Rylie for 2 hours without any sleepy breakdowns. She was smiley, chatty, giggly, squirmy and genuinely happy to be playing with her older friend Rylie. She took a 20 minute power nap on the way home and a short hour nap later in the afternoon. So, in comparison to a normal day when she wakes up two hours later and gets 4 hours of naptime, today she only got about 2-2.5 hours of naptime AND woke up way too early AND was thrown into a couple different social situations. For those of you who have young children, you know this is AMAZING. The most amazing thing about the entire day was that Emerson was delightful and had no major breakdowns. I just don't understand. The math does not make sense.

I don't know how she did it, but I am proud. I do hope for my sake though that she wakes up later than 5:30 am tomorrow...and that this is not a new pattern. Selfishly, I like having two 2-hour windows of time in the day to get things done.

Here are some pics from today's playdate. These are courtesy of Kari since my camera cord has not arrived yet. (It should be here tomorrow and I promise the pictures will have been worth the wait).

Love,
Sabrina

2 comments:

bethany said...

Kids are funny like that-just when you have the "perfect" routine, they go and throw it off. I remember that Jakson went on a sort of sleep strike when he was about 8/9 months old and I got really worried that it was going to be permanent-we actually had to sleep train him all over again!! Fortunately, it didn't last too long and he went back to his original routine with some small adjustments. Good luck-kids are full of fun surprises!!

Amy said...

That's amazing. I can't believe how big Rylie is getting. She's so cute!