First of all, thanks to everyone for understanding that a girl needs a break every once in a while. Secondly, I am ready (and sane enough) to explain to you what’s been going on and why I needed a mental health day! Fortunately for me, my day off yesterday was blessed with a happy child and 75 degree weather. Ahhhhhh!!!! It was truly awesome!

As you know from previous posts, we recently moved Davis from a crib to a toddler bed. (We just took the rail off of his crib and gave him new digs.) It was going really well!! And then, it wasn’t. As of today, the child has not napped in over 10 days. Some say he’s done with naps. I say he’s not. I was hoping the novelty of being able to get out of bed and play would wear off. I could give it another few weeks but we have a lot of newness coming our way. He needs his rest in order to deal with a new school, new schedule, and, of course, a new baby.

The bottom line is that the babe is not ready for not taking naps. He has always been the kid that if he naps well, he sleeps well at night. He has been so tired that we have had to battle bad moods that lead to worse moods that lead to no one sleeping and everyone being cranky. There has also been a spell of biting, hitting, clawing and overall totally freak out sessions (to be clear, all the violence comes from Davis’ side of the table, not ours!). It’s been a lot too much to take. For those of you without kids or about to have kids, please excuse my brutal honesty!

Here is what I found Friday afternoon around 3pm:

He’d only been asleep for 30 minutes. In our former non-toddler bed life, he would have been waking up from an hour and a half nap and happy as a lark.

Here he is at 3:15 pm that same day…

If you look very, very closely, you’ll see a “chalk outline” of stickers around his body. I’m telling you, it was a toy crime scene!

Here is what I found yesterday at 3 pm:

TRUE crime scene! Look at his stuffed elephant: he couldn’t take it anymore either. It’s hilarious, I know. But, I feel bad for the little guy. And, no, this doesn’t happen every day. These are the only two times he’s slept at all during the day in the past two weeks.

As is the obvious, he is eventually napping…it’s just right when it’s time to get up. The big question: WILL HE EVENTUALLY GIVE UP and start napping again? OR, do we need to put his crib back together? Maybe he simply wasn’t ready yet.

For experiment #2, we did end up putting the crib rail back up last night. He’s spent the night at my mom’s last night. We’ll see how he takes the news when he gets home this afternoon… As always, I would love your thoughts, Choppers.

Adrianne