Resisting Her Nap

For about the last week or so, Katie Anne has moved into the "resisting the nap" phase. 

  Luckily, it is a peaceful resistance ... 

Today, at 4:00, I walked in (just up from a great hour and a half nap myself) to find the little hippie in her room, playing quietly and having a great time.  So, at least her resistance isn't too much trouble.  She doesn't put up much of a fight about laying down - most days it's easy as pie to get her to lay down and rest.  She never tries to leave the room or calls for me to come back.  She just quietly gets up, gets some fun things to do, takes them back to her bed, and plays.  

Some days, she plays quietly for 15-30 minutes and then falls asleep - that's the ideal situation in this new scenario.  That way, she gets a little quiet playtime and about an hour and a half nap, and that seems to work perfectly.  Sometimes, she doesn't sleep at all - I come in and find her still playing quietly after her two hour "nap time" is over.  Then it is a toss-up whether she'll be pleasant until bedtime or get irritable after 7:00 or so.  If she's irritable, we just do an earlier bedtime, and everything's fine.

Unfortunately, sometimes she falls asleep very late in the nap time frame ... and that seems to be the worst possibility.  If she plays for a long time and then falls asleep for only a few minutes, she is as surly as she can be when I wake her up after the two hours is over.  I've even given up a few times and just let the monster continue to sleep ... and she's very cheerful once she wakes up on her own.  The bad thing is that she also wants to stay up until 10:00 at night because her nap ran too late if I do that - and I have a very hard time staying up that late and being any kind of coherent parent at that point, and Daddy's patience starts to run low once we hit the 9:00 hour.  So, I've just started forcing her to wake up after two hours, regardless of how long I know she was actually asleep.  This is a very tough time for both of us - yesterday, she cried and whined and dropped on the deck and flubbed like a fish for 45 minutes after I forced her to get up at 4:00 ... and the only cure for her attitude was gymnastics class at 5:00.  She was just as happy as a little clam once she got to the gym.  Unfortunately, after fighting with KA for 45 minutes, sitting on the hard metal bleachers in the hot, stuffy gym for 35 minutes wasn't much of a cure for my bad attitude!

Right now, our hope is that going back to school next week - waking up earlier and napping with the class at a scheduled time - will straighten this situation out a little bit.  Otherwise, we're going to have to make the call whether or not to end KA's nap time ... and that's not something I really want to do with a new baby almost here!