How Much Sleep Talk Is Too Much Sleep Talk?

So, is anybody sick of hearing about sleep yet? I know that after a solid year of worrying about how long Bryson has napped, how long he sleeps at night, how many times he gets up at night and for how long, and whether teething or illness or growth spurts or the phase of the moon might be affecting his sleep, I've had just about enough sleep chatter to last me a lifetime. I'm thinking about switching things around and talking about my sleep instead. Like, at what point in my life will I again get to sleep for 8 uninterrupted hours? If your answer is never, you are not allowed to comment.

Anyways, for what it's worth, Bry managed to sleep from 6:15 last night to 6:15 this morning. More accurately, he was able to put himself back to sleep during that time frame, since he actually woke up like 4 times. This is good. But I can't keep my brain from analyzing this and wondering what was the magic combination of events that allowed this sleep-a-thon to occur. Was it the fact that he took a 25-minute nap yesterday morning and a 10-minute nap (I kid you not) yesterday afternoon? Was it because we took him to the zoo and Steve put him on the super duper toddler wear down program consisting of a lot of chasing and tackling? Was the temperature in his room just right? Was he conked out because he seems to be getting ANOTHER cold? (Which, P.S. When do toddlers actually develop immune systems?) Who knows. In the end, my bet is on the short naps because Bry was about ready to fall asleep at dinner last night and although I've read accounts of kids falling asleep in high chairs in baby books, this does not happen at our house. Admittedly the short naps were our fault. Despite our best efforts at planning the zoo trip around nap time, Bry fell asleep in the car both to and from the zoo and snapped awake the moment I tried to oh-so-carefully unbuckle him from his car seat.

Here's where the debate really surfaces. Is a full night's sleep really worth the toddler threat level: orange that comes with what amounts to no naps during the day? Yesterday afternoon and evening were not so pretty in terms of avoiding melty meltdowns around things like not serving dinner fast enough and why are you going into the bathroom, you're supposed to be staying here with meeee! In all fairness, it wasn't that bad, but it's also hard to get much done when naps are nonexistent. Especially things like taking a nap myself.

I guess in the end (imagine cheesy TV voiceover tone here), the parenting lesson that I've been spending the last year learning applies here too. That is, we have no control over this, and any control we might believe we have is illusory. Sure, we can set up conditions to help Bry sleep as well as possible, but he's going to sleep or not sleep and we'll deal with whatever comes up. But I'm still gonna be crossing my fingers and chanting a good luck mantra for good sleep. Because even in the absence of control, there's always hope, right?