The anti-napper

Well, the good news is that Lucy has gotten pretty skilled at pulling herself to a “standing position”:/news/2007/crib-corn/. The bad news is that standing up is so compelling that she won’t take a nap.

Ever since we went swaddle-free about a month ago, Lucy has been taking quite a long time to fall asleep for naps — often up to an hour. She isn’t unhappy most of the time, just talking to herself and playing. Eventually she falls asleep and gets a good nap.

The anti-napper

Since this weekend, however, Lucy has been boycotting the naps altogether. After a solid 90 minutes of chattering, squeaking bedsprings, and some intermittent crying, Jon and I enter Lucy’s room to find a very excited, sort of happy, but clearly overtired child. After this morning’s nap (so-called), we discovered that she had been chewing on “her paper mobile”:/news/2006/the-lucy-files-week-7-day-2/ that was now within her grasp. Baby-proofing, here we come! Peeking in on her during this afternoon’s nap-time, we could see her standing and doing her little wobbly dance moves in the corner of her crib. She never did sleep at all. Sigh.

p{color:gray}. Photo: Caught in the act! Lucy’s clearly not too chagrined about pulling down and chewing up her hand-made paper mobile.

This seems to be just a phase we’ll need to endure, since it’s likely her developmental growth that is keeping her awake. And we are thankful that she is sleeping hard and long all night. But we do wish there is something we could do to soothe our little red-eyed friend to sleep. Until then, we might just need to put her to bed early and hope for the best!

10 Replies to “The anti-napper”

  1. Though we’ve suspected she could do it for quite a while now, today was the first time we actually witnessed Lucy going from belly to standing in the crib all by herself. And she really went to town! I had already moved the mattress down for safety, but tonight I moved it all the way to the bottom so she can’t hardly reach the top rail. Hopefully that will make it harder (and less tempting) for her to stand and look out at the world instead of napping.

    I remember “Katrina observing”:/news/2007/crib-corn/#comment-1799 that she regretted teaching Maddy to stand in the crib…. Now I’m wondering the same thing!

  2. Well, take heart, if it is a developmental thing, she’ll get over it eventually. Benjamin never refused to nap from a developmental milestone, but he would wake up super early in the morning (like 5:30 instead of 7:00). He did that for crawling and walking, if he did it for standing I can’t remember (but standing and crawling pretty much went hand in hand).

    You might try shifting her nap time to a little bit later to see if that helps at all. Benjamin for a long time went down for his morning nap 2 hours after waking, but eventually shifted it to 2 1/2 hours after waking.

  3. Oh Ann!

    So fun, but kinda frustrating too! Aren’t these babies so clever! Abby doesn’t know how to pull up by herself yet (thank goodness!) but she’s already trying her hand at “cruising” from one object to another or just around the object. She sometimes even “no-hands” it when standing! I know that Lucy just turned 9 months and Abby will be there over the weekend. Isn’t it amazing how much they’ve grown and changed!! Every new thing is exciting but comes with its own set of troubles, doesn’t it? You have my prayers and sympathies for better nap times. Naps are crucial in the day for me too! :)

  4. I think it’s funny that she was chewing on her paper mobile. All sorts of things are now within reach! Watch out. Hope the naps return to normal soon. :)

  5. I’ve been meaning to update the situation here: Lucy took two fabulous morning naps of almost 90 minutes today and yesterday — hooray! She even took a short afternoon nap yesterday. Currently, she is chattering away to herself in her room — my hope is that even if she doesn’t sleep, she’ll be restored by her alone time. She still takes about an hour to actually fall asleep, but most of the time she is just talking and playing happily. It is nice that she is learning to enjoy her own company!

  6. Well, my parents finally came and saw us (haven’t seen maddy for almost 1 year) and Mom said we souldn’t post on the web because of all of the “evil” people who pray on children. What are your thoughts. This has really upset me as it is one way I keep in touch with our friends, but maybe she is right and I am giving people I don’t know a way into our family.
    By the way, she says Lucy is cute!

  7. bkgoodwill,

    I know you don’t know me and forgive me if it wasn’t MY opinion you were asking… but our family also dealt with the “evil people on the internet” issue (in our case it was my husband’s concern rather than my parents.)

    We decided keep right on posting pictures and updates of our kids (until our time became an issue and we laid our blog to rest) – but we decided to take these precautions:

    (1) we never use our family last name, nor the kids’ real first names – we gave them all nicknames.

    (2) we never post their birthdates (nor obviously their birthday celebrations where you could figure out their birth dates.)

    (3) we never post the name of our city/town or any photos with giveaway landmarks – we refer to ourselves living in “the upper peninsula of Michigan” but don’t get more specific than that.

    Obviously if someone was determined, they could probably find us. Actually they could probably find us even without a blog. There is no “safety” at all on the internet, or anywhere else – except the safety and security of belonging to Christ and knowing that he protects us.

    But Christ commands us to be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves. Doing both is going to involve some hard choices. We decided for us that giving up the blog out of fear was not a godly choice… but for us it also seemed unwise to blithely post anything and everything about our family. So this was our choice.

    I think the Body of Christ will (and perhaps ought to!) make different choices along the whole continuum from “innocent as doves” (posting every detail of life, trusting and open – whether wisely by choice/calling to be a witness to the world and to our extended family — or foolishly out of ignorance) to “wise as serpents” (unlisted phone number, no internet presence at all – whether wisely by choice/calling to ‘throw off every hindrance’ or out of submission to spouse or parents — or foolishly out of fear.)

    The choices we made seemed like the best way for our own family to honor God in this – but certainly not the only way, as this very blog attests! :o)

    (p.s. congrats Ann on the napping! I wish I’d done more of that with my kids… they all had to cry it out around age two due to my own exhaustion, and that was MUCH more wearing on all of us than crying it out at 6-8 mos would have been.)

  8. I have started a blog and have long had photos of my family on the internet. I believe it would take some work for someone just to find my blog or this blog even. Yes it is posted places, but I don’t put the info in general areas where anyone can find the info.

    I’m much more worried about the unknown sex offender that lives in my town, and sees me out with my children, than one who may see them on the internet, but at that point have no idea how to find them. Or if they manage to find where we live discover that it’s thousands of miles away.

    I entrust my children to God for care. I do my part as a parent to keep them safe, and ask Him to protect them from evil.

  9. I think Kelly’s comments are very good. General internet protocol (in chat rooms and such) is to never post personal information (last name, address, phone number, city where you live, etc.). I think you also have to take into account that there are millions of people on the internet and bunches of them have blogs, post photos, etc., so the likelihood that a predator would stumble on yours and try to find you is probably pretty slim. I think it becomes more risky when the kids get old enough to go into chat rooms themselves and meet potential predators.

    I agree with Tysa that you probably have more to fear from strangers where you live than people on the Internet. That said, it doesn’t hurt to take precautions and not post too much personal info. I suppose if you were really concerned, you could always get a password protected, encrypted web site and only give logon information to friends and family.

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