To nap, or not to nap? That IS the question!

Tyson will be 3 years old in exactly one month! Just in case you don't know our story, he basically grew about 5 inches and gained almost 13 pounds since we adopted him 9 months ago. The boy was under the charts in weight. He has been learning English like crazy, speech improving weekly/monthly...no wonder he was taking 2 hour naps everyday and sleeping 9-11 hours every night!

But lately, something is shifting. His growth is tapering off, which is probably good. Oh a few extra inches wouldn't hurt him, but his weight gain was starting to "weigh" on my mind. So with this added physical growth was also added sleep time. Then a good friend told me that just learning a language is enough to also wear a person out! That made perfect sense. I figured he'd be napping til age 4....think again.

On average, he wakes up between 6:45 and 7:45 am, depending if Daddy is working or not. He'd take a 2 hour nap each day, and I'd put him down between 8:30 and 9pm. I admit, part of that nap was also so I could have more time with him in the evenings--guilty! I often don't get home until 5:30. Anyway, he'd fall asleep within 10-20min of being tucked in. For those of you who have followed my journey and remember the early days of trying to get a routine established, this is a MAJOR victory and just goes to show PAPs to not give up when they get their child home! It took us about 2-3 months to find what worked.

But now, even if he is tucked in at regular time he will stay up singing or talking until 10:00pm or later!!! So we decided to try no naps. It was working! We even tried to prove our theory wrong by giving him a nap...yep, up til 10:30 that day.

But twice this week, he has fallen asleep around 5pm...NOT GOOD. I was putting him to bed by 8 on these no-nap days, but when he falls asleep, yikes! The other night he fell asleep at 7:30pm on the couch, and that was fine...he slept all night. But last night, we couldn't wake him up. I finally got him to snap to it around 7pm, but it was too late. Damage done. I put him to be at TEN, and at 11pm he was still singing! We said, "GO TO SLEEP!" He said, "OK..." I am assuming he did because I did too.

So I hoped he'd sleep til at least 8am this morning and go for the whole no-nap thing again today to get him to bed earlier tonight. OH NO!!! Up at 6:30 am.

I do not want a repeat of the 5:00pm fall asleep time, so I'm going to have him take a nap, only about 1.5 hrs. Hopefully then we can get him back on track. Wish me luck!

So here he is last night around 7pm snuggled up to me while I tried to keep him awake by taking pictures. You can see the glass-eyed-I-want-to-sleep look.