Staying in

I have pushed it long enough. Benjamin needs his morning naps.

He has been having more and more trouble sleeping at night, a direct result (I believe) of inconsistent napping schedules. With Colin and Caleb I was very stringent; nothing interfered with naptime and bedtime. I recall, without fondness, of the first year of Caleb's life in which I had to be at home from 9-11 in the morning, 1-3 in the afternoon, and in by 7:30 at night. The only way I managed a social life was to constantly have people over to my house (an invitation they graciously accepted!) I relied this long on Benjamin's good nature to keep going out to playdates and outings, but it seems to be catching up. Morning naps are non-existent and afternoon naps run barely an hour. The rest of the day he is irritable and red-eyed, exhausted yet unable to fall asleep with the busyness and distractions around him.

And so I will likely have to put a moratorium on morning activities once more. Luckily there are only three more months until his first birthday, when morning naps usually disappear anyway. I may push my luck one morning a week, since I just got the go-ahead for a preschool music class. Hopefully he'll be okay for that.

I try to look at the upside. Caleb and I will be sure to get our preschool program in, and maybe I can get this house into a bit more order. Okay, that might be pushing my luck, but I'm learning to accept that I'm housekeeping is not my strength. And that's not a bad thing. We can't all be carbon copies of each other, perfect in every area. How boring would that be!