the funny thing about bedtime (and nap time)

Alice goes to bed pretty much at 7pm and sleeps if all elements are perfect, until about 7:30am. It's pretty nice having that extra special alone time from 7pm until our own bedtime at 11/midnight. Those hours in the evening when we're free of the baby and can watch whatever we want uninterrupted. Even reading is possible!

I read a mom's blog post recently about how she felt bad when she realized she was counting down to bedtime. It was a very sweet post about how she had been trying to make efforts to savor every moment with her babies during the day but realized she was speed reading through the bedtime book to get the kids to sleep as soon as possible. Not exactly savoring. It was a nice reminder.

Bedtime always sneaks up on me. I hardly ever need a clock because my abalone is a finely tuned human tick tock. At 9/10am, 12pm, 4pm, she's ready for a nap and at 7pm she's inconsolably fussy and the only cure is to get her in her room, pj her up, dim the lights, feed her, and put her to bed. (Sometimes it's incident less but sometimes she wants to be held and once she hits the crib she starts crying. We did that let her cry thing one night and it took an hour of torturous crying before she was done. Then the next night, maybe 30 minutes, then 10 minutes, now if she opens her eyes and cries and notices that I'm still leaving the room she'll fall asleep within seconds. It's like she's testing us.) But of course once she's in bed I spend time looking at pictures of her and missing her. But darn it if she wakes up ugh, the dance of having to do that again! And that next trying to get her to sleep movement is much harder to work than the first one. It's like aww don't go to sleep I'll miss you but then it's like aww dang it don't wake up until morning!

Naptime we've gotten into some ridiculously bad habits here. We pretty much just hold her or nap with her because she wakes up about 90% of the time if place her in her crib. I want to break her of the habits but holy crap holding my 6 month old baby for an hour could not be a better use of my time. And oh excuse me, now I HAVE to take a nap with my baby in our big comfy bed and she'll sleep longer? Well... don't mind if I do.