We have a scheduling issue. It's been going on from some time now, but it seems that it has really come to a head recently.
You see, for my sanity, I appreciate a time of peace and quiet with all the kids doing something other than crawling on/pulling on/hanging on/talking to me. Even just a short while is great and helps me keep the energy that I need to make it through the rest of the day.
But the problem is that if Gabriel takes a nap in the middle of the day, it takes him forever to go to sleep at night. Jo, however does well with a midday nap and without it, she has a hard time making it through the day and her behavior is horrible for at least one day after she has missed her nap.
So, what we have been doing is Jo will take a nap and Gabriel will stay up so that I have time with Gabriel 'alone' in the middle of the day and then he goes to bed before Jo so that I have time with Jo 'alone' in the evening.
That works...kind of. The problem is that then Gabriel is so tired by the end of the day that he falls asleep in the car on the way to pick Jimmy up from work, which is about a 5-10 minute ride, and is miserable when we have to wake him up and sometimes if he sleeps for those 15-20 minutes for the round trip, he has a really hard time falling asleep at night. He also just looks really tired all afternoon.
I have been toying with the idea of just letting him have quite time in his room, but the thing is that his room is also Jesse's room. And my room. And Jimmy's room. So I can't really say that it is very well childproofed and that means that while he is in there jumping from our bed to his, I can't really put Jesse down for his nap.
We have a pack and play that we use for Jesse sometimes downstairs in the back room, but Jesse never really sleeps that well there and it is also very close to the day noises of anything else that is going on in the house.
Sometimes, though, I put Gabriel down and he falls asleep in 5 minutes, which means that I know that he needed the nap. (I usually use 15 minutes as my benchmark. If he doesn't sleep in 15, then it's not meant to be.) But that means that there is really no consistency for him...nap or no nap...it all depends.
I know that he is transitioning out of his naps, but I just feel like it's not really working out the way that we are doing it right now.
How have any of you helped the transition period with your kids?
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