Naptime

Now that Jonah's fussy times seem to be fading away, we decided to take on the unpleasant task of trying to put him down for naps at routine times (fairly routine at least) and without assistance from us to fall asleep. What we have going for us is that since I am home all day I can basically focus on this one task. One of our hurdles is that we have one very stubborn child to contend with. The worst part of it all though, as anyone who has tried this knows, is the crying that must take place to get to your end goal. Oh the crying! It is gut wrenching to not pick up your child when they want you! You know you can make the crying stop, but are choosing not to! You basically feel like the scum of the earth.

So far it has been difficult, but overall not as bad as I had been anticipating. (Of course it has only been a couple of days and I am still in a very optimistic place!) He is crying for 10 minutes or less when we initially put him down, which is pretty good. The real crying is coming in when he wakes up after his infamous 30 minute catnaps. At that point he is just rested enough to really let loose. Yesterday his post catnap screaming lasted longer than his nap did. At that point he was more exhausted than when he went down! Needless to say it was a long day. He is faring a bit better today with 15 minute crying bouts after the catnap portion. The next step will be establishing a regular time each day that he will go down, but we're just gonna take this one step at a time.