No Sleep Zone

Over the last month there have been more and more days that Charla will talk to herself for 1 hour instead of fall asleep. I always get her up after about 1 hour because I figure if she hasn't fallen asleep yet, she probably won't. Usually, if she skips a nap one day, the next day she'll take a nice 1.5-2hr nap. However, after taking a nice nap, the following morning she's awake earlier than normal. I've always left bedtime at a consistent 8pm. I think she's normally asleep by about 8:15pm.

Yesterday, despite the daylight savings switch, I decided to keep nap time and bedtime at the same times (1pm and 8pm) because I like those times. She finally fell asleep at 2:15pm for nap and slept for 30 minutes. However, at bedtime she didn't fall asleep until about 8:40pm! She just kept talking to her blankies, "Oh, Key! Hi!" like, "Fancy meeting you here in this crib of mine"!

So, this morning she didn't wake up until 8am (LOVED that!) but she has now talked through an entire nap, for the second day in a row (can you really count a 30min snooze as a nap?)! It's almost 2pm and then I'm going to go get her up. This is craziness but I'm actually excited/relieved to be faced with the end of nap. I have always hated planning my life around her nap schedule. I've been religious about it for the last year because I know she needs her sleep but the fact that the days of counting down how much time I have before I need to get her home or hauling a pack n play to grandma's because we're going to be there during nap time are numbered, is so freeing!

I'm going to keep putting her in her crib around the same time every day for her 1 hour chat sessions. If she sleeps she sleeps if not, oh well. She's never crabby because of it and I'm thankful for that!