Thursday, March 12, 2009

Blissful Sleep

Caleb has always slept at least 12 hours at night--which usually means until 8:00 or 8:30am. Naps though...they have been hit and miss for a LONG time. He definitely still needs a nap, so that was never really the issue.

All along, I knew I should take all the toys out of his room. But I was hesitant because I liked him to play independently when we were upstairs too--which he definitely does! He wouldn't usually play with them at nap time, so I thought they weren't much of a distraction.

But some days he would play with them. Our rule is that he has to stay in his bed for a certain amount of time whether he goes to sleep or not. So here he is "keeping" the rule:


Minus the time it took him to go grab all those buckets of toys, I guess he was technically keeping the rule of staying in his bed.

Before Carson was born, I was rearranging all the rooms and closets upstairs. Caleb's closet ended up being virtually empty. It dawned on me one day a few weeks ago, that I should move all the shelves with his toys from his room to his closet and put a child lock on it. Now his room looks like this:

Can anyone say heaven? I wish I had done it a year ago! He has taken at least a two hour nap almost every day since!! And has been sleeping until 9am every day. Ahhh...such a welcome relief and the timing couldn't be better. He is so much happier in the evenings as well. And in the mornings, I can just open his closet door and he can play with them all he wants. Why, oh why, did I not think of this soooooo long ago?!? Please, just let it never end. :)

On those days that he still decided not to take a nap, I have always wondered how he managed to entertain himself.


He definitely manages.

Now the only thing he has to play with when getting ready for bed...



...is Carson!

P.S. I KNEW I shouldn't have posted this one. I jinxed myself...Caleb didn't take a nap today. Sigh.

1 comment:

JoEllen said...

That is such a great idea! Little Sal used to reach over his crib (how he managed that I'm not sure) and pull toys or books into his crib. When he moved to a big boy bed, he would rarely get out of it, but when he did he would always bring the toys back to his bed. It's so funny that they do that! You think they would just get up and play. Naps have been hit or miss lately at our house too (although, like Caleb Sal definitely NEEDS a nap). In our new house the toys are outside of his room, and now that I'm reading your post, he's been taking great naps this week. Hmmmm...you're such a genius! :)

PS Carson is so adorable!