Coining a new catch phrase

TWON = Toddler WithOut Nap

The girls have never been great nappers. Well, they are great nappers when they don't sleep well at night but then after a great nap, they won't sleep well that night. Does that make any sense? It's almost like their little systems only need a blast of good sleep and then they are back to being not so great sleepers. Allie would have been a great sleeper if she had been a singleton. I think part of her issue is room sharing but she really would have had to have been a singleton for her fantastic sleep habits to really shine.

So the girls transitioned into a new nap routine sometime last month. It was slow in the making, a transformation over several months, but it was a new routine for them. Now, keep in mind when reading this post that the girls dropped their afternoon nap when they were only 11 months old. Yes, 11 months old. We obviously had some grumpy babies on our hands following that decision and we second guessed ourselves on more than one occasion. "Are they old enough to only have one nap?" we would ask each other on a daily basis. There were days that we put them down for a short morning nap in an attempt to battle the grumpiness and do you know what the girls would do? That's right, they would refuse to nap in the afternoon. So we moved back to Plan A - one nap.

Okay, back to the new nap routine that emerged in December. Em would be the first one asleep, sometimes before her sisters were even situated in their cribs. I assume that part of this is because she doesn't sleep all that great at night. Anna would talk and talk and talk, sometimes pulling Allie into her conversations but more likely than not Allie (and sometimes Em) could be heard telling Anna to go to sleep!

We experienced a few days with Anna not napping at all. Hence, the phrase TODDLER WITHOUT NAP, which I like to shorten to TWON. The new wake-up time for naps is 3:00 and Anna remains in her crib until that time, sometimes talking the entire length of the "nap." Anna without a nap can be really awesome come bed time because she can pass out within 30 seconds from exhaustion or it can be "really awesome" because she can have a breakdown as a result of exhaustion. Pick which awesomeness you would like to parent. Yes, I thought so.

And then there was Saturday. I don't even know what to call that experience. Well, maybe we should just leave it as "an experience." I left shortly before the girls' nap to run some errands and when I returned home, Rich ran out to run some more errands. I was a bit surprised to return home to hear chatting from not one or two but all three toddlers. It was around 2:00 and I fully expected Emily to be asleep as she did not sleep well the night before. I ended up having to go up to their room shortly after 2:30 as Allie was having some sort of breakdown and at that point, it was obvious that their "nap" was over. Remember, we don't allow them to sleep past 3:00.

We still manage to finagle the girls into their sleepsacks (also referred to as "sacks" in our house), which seems to deter them from climbing out of their cribs. I walked into their room to find Em and Anna sans sacks. (Rich later told me that they had refused to wear them for him.) Em had pulled the front of her long sleeve tee shirt over her head and behind her neck so she was really just wearing sleeves. Her leggings had been mostly pulled off and her diaper was abandoned in her crib. This is the first time that we have had an In The Crib Diaper Removal incident and thank goodness she is somewhat potty trained as everything in her crib was clean and dry. I laughed and laughed and laughed.

The girls fell asleep without fussing within two minutes that night at bedtime causing Rich and I to ask each other, "Are they too young to go napless?"

Of course, I took pictures! Here's Em...