A Nap a Day...

...is one nap too few.

Bryson seems to be trying to decide if he wants to drop one of his naps. His predictable 9 am and 1 pm naps are a thing of the past. Not that they were around for all that long. Just as soon as I was comfortable with Bry's schedule, he's decided to change it up. Nothing surprising there, but perhaps I should have a talk with middle management about the information flow in this corporation. Mama seems to get left out of the loop an awful lot.

Yesterday morning I battled Bry for 30 minutes, trying very hard to convince him that napping is nice, that it feels good to close your eyes and rest, yes it really does. He was having none of it. After an epic battle that I didn't feel like carrying on all morning, I gave up and Steve took Bry grocery shopping. I left to run some errands and conveniently didn't come back until I was sure that Bry would be ready for another go at a nap and Steve could be the one to try his luck at charming Bry to sleep. (OK, I actually spent most of the morning trying to find winter boots for Bry and legitimately didn't come home until after the start of nap time. Every single pair of toddler boots that cost less than $50 seems to have disappeared from the metro area. Curse those parents who actually prepare themselves for the change of seasons on time.)

Twenty minutes before I arrived home I got a worried call from Steve, "Um, this child doesn't look anywhere near ready for a nap." I reminded him that Bry can hide his need for sleep very, very well and urged him to try anyways. Steve got him to nap without incident, but he only stayed asleep for an hour, after which he was up banging his hand on his crib rail and ready to be done with this whole sleeping thing.

Fast forward a couple of hours and Bry is tired. And cranky. Dinner consisted of excitedly and frantically signing "more" when the BANANAS! were first sighted on the counter, followed shortly thereafter by much writhing and protesting when I dared to offer Bry a spoon to feed himself some BANANAS! (You see the contradiction here, yes? Babies just are not reasonable. End of story.) Mid-meal I took him out of his highchair because he was coming close to ejecting himself out of pure misery and rage. I put him on the floor in the living room where he commenced to roll around, also in misery and rage. Dinner re-commenced after Bry calmed down and crawled over to me, again signing "more?" in a hopeful manner. And then it re-ended 10 minutes later when Bry threw everything I offered him (cheese, water, his spoon) on the floor.

Straightaway to the bath, where Bry calmed down almost immediately and played happily with his cups in the tub. He was asleep for the night (in the figurative sense) by 6:15.

Needless to say, one nap doesn't seem to quite do it for Bry. Not yet, at least. I'm thinking some baby Unisom is in order. Or maybe some hypnosis. Or, failing that, earplugs. For me.