I'm not complaining about my son's big-picture napping habits, but once in awhile we run into a very bad day. This week I've gotten spoiled with a succession of really nice almost 3 hour naps. But then out of the blue will pop up a no-nap day, and the result is not pretty.
No-nap days happen in one of two ways. The first way is if he falls asleep in the car on the way home from a morning excursion. Even if he's out for only 5 minutes, that may kill any afternoon nap. He wakes up and acts like a wild man until I wrestle him into his crib at 2 pm, and then he sings and reads and plays with trucks until I let him out at least an hour and a half later. I go to extreme lengths to prevent him falling asleep in the car. Today I kept opening the sunroof of my car on the interstate and even waved his toys in the wind through the roof to keep him awake.
The second kind of no-nap day is worse; it comes when I find him sprawled out lying on the kitchen floor with his duck and his pacifier around lunchtime, and put him in his crib without even a struggle. And then for no reason at all he just doesn't sleep. He talks, and talks, and talks... there is nothing like the sinking feeling of realizing that his nap is just not occurring. I go up every 45 minutes to make sure a dirty diaper isn't keeping him awake, but after about an hour and a half or even two hours, what's there to do but get the boy up? It is a sad day when I pick him up at 2 pm, no nap, and face at least four hours till bedtime.
All of this is to say that I think I have an irrational sense of entitlement to naptime.
