No More Naps?

Anna Claire and Mallory "resting" this afternoon

It's been one week since we dropped regularly scheduled naps for the girls in an effort to lengthen nighttime sleep and {hopefully} put an end to Mallory's nighttime wakings. I can probably count on one had the number of times Mallory has slept through the night since April 12, 2010, the night she launched herself out her crib causing us to switch both girls to toddler beds two nights later. It has been an exhausting year and three months. Dr. Tillman thinks {and we hope} if Mallory can fall asleep more easily at bedtime, the nighttime wakings will stop. Well...

More recently, since late spring, the girls have been falling asleep around 8:30 {too late in my opinion, but they just weren't tired}, waking up at 6:30 {much too early, don't you think?} and napping for a solid 1-1/2 hours each day with Mallory continuing to wake up a few times a night {usually once or twice, but sometimes more}. It just sort of gradually evolved to that.

Our new plan has the girls resting on our bed for a hour to an hour and a half. Sometimes we read or sometimes we watch a Disney movie, and twice they've fallen asleep for 30-45 minutes {see picture above} and that's been OK because some days they are just more tired depending on how we've spent our morning. They are in bed and asleep by 7:30 which is really great because they are good and tired and not overly tired and fussy as we'd feared. However, they are still waking us between 6:00 and 6:30 and Mallory is still waking up in the middle of the night. Baby steps, right? For now, getting out of their room at 7:30 instead of 8:30 or sometimes 9:00 has been a major morale booster around here.